Symposium Programme
10.00 – 10.40 Registration and Coffee
10.50 Opening remarks: Celia Kerslake, Chair of BATAS
11.00 Nick Baird, BATAS President
Turkey’s place in the geopolitics of energy after the Russian invasion of Ukraine
11.50 Professor William Hale, SOAS University of London
Turkey’s energy dilemmas: between the economy and the environment
12.45 – 14.00 Break for lunch (Robert Gardner Room)
14.10 Dr Candan Ertubey, University of East London
Everyday challenges facing Turkish communities in the UK: a psychologist’s view
15.00 Professor John O’Connell, University of Cardiff
‘Şık bir gazel oldu’: style and taste in Turkish classical music under Atatürk
BATAS Thirtieth Spring Symposium 2021
Perceptions of the Other: The Ottoman Empire/Turkey and the West
Saturday, 22 May 2021
Online via Zoom
Symposium Programme
Opening remarks: Celia Kerslake, Chair of BATAS
Sir Noel Malcolm
Western European Views of the Ottoman Empire, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment
Dr Yaprak Gürsoy
Turkish Perceptions of the West and the UK: Between Admiration and Animosity
Dr Murat Akser
Turkey and the West: Mutually Suspicious Perceptions in Film
BATAS Twenty-ninth Spring Symposium 2018
in association with the London Middle East Institute, SOAS (LMEI)
Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Senate House, SOAS University of London
Saturday 10 March 2018
Symposium Programme
10.00 – 10.40 – Registration (in entrance hall of Paul Webley Wing) and Coffee/Tea (in Room S209)
10.50 – Opening remarks by President of BATAS
11.00 – Bill Park, Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Defence Studies, King’s College London
“Turkey’s assorted Kurdish woes”
11.50 – Tim Stanley, Senior Curator, Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum
“Barbarossa’s Bath-house: Ottoman tiles and Persian poetry in the 1540s”
12.45 – Break for lunch
14.45 – Dr Gül Berna Özcan, Reader in International Business and Entrepreneurship, School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London
“Piety, business and politics: a quarter-century transformation in Turkey”
15.35 – Professor Daniela Berghahn, Professor of Film Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London
“Turkish-German cinema and the diasporic family experience”
16.45 – Closing remarks by President of BATAS
17.00 – BATAS Annual General Meeting to be held in the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Room B104 (first floor).
Twenty-eighth Spring Symposium 2017
Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Senate House
SOAS University of London
Saturday 6 May 2017
10am to 4.40pm
Symposium Programme
10.00 – 10.40 – Registration and Coffee/Tea
10.50 – Opening remarks (Professor William Hale, Acting President of BATAS)
11.00 – Uluç Gürkan, (Former Deputy Speaker of the Turkish Grand National Assembly and Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe (PACE) and OSCE)
“Legal light on the ‘Malta Tribunals’ of 1919-1921: The British Government’s unsuccessful attempt to bring Turks to trial after WW1”
11.50 – Professor Scott Redford, (History of Art & Archaeology, SOAS, University of London)
“An A-Z of medieval Anatolian travel”
12.45 – Break for lunch (list of local eating places available at registration desk)
14.15 – Dr Ziya Meral, (Resident Fellow, British Army’s Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research)
“Turkey’s Security Dilemma: What drives Turkish security and defence policies? And why is the country facing more insecurity as their outcome?”
15.05 – Dr Rachel Harris, (Reader in Ethnomusicology, SOAS, University of London)
“Text, performance, and the transnational circulation of the Hikmet poetry of 12th-century Sufi Ahmet Yesevi”
16.00 – 16.30 – Coffee/Tea
16.40 – BATAS Annual General Meeting
Twenty-seventh Spring Symposium 2016
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
The Queen’s Building
Saturday 9 April 2016
10am to 4.30pm
Symposium Programme
10.00 – 10.40 – Registration and Coffee (The Queen’s Building)
10.50 – Opening remarks (Michael Lake, President of BATAS)
11.00 – Prof. Dr Sinan Bayraktaroğlu, (Hacettepe University, Ankara)
“The issue of Turkish versus English as languages of higher education in Turkey”
11.50 – Edward Charlton-Jones, (Allen & Overy LLP)
“White Russian Refugees in Constantinople, 1918-23”
12.45 – 14.00 – Break for lunch (served in the Upper Hall)
14.10 – Dr İpek Demir, (University of Leicester)
“Kurdish and Turkish communities from Turkey: From ‘economic immigrants’ to ‘political diasporas’?”
15.00 – Dr Eylem Atakav, (University of East Anglia)
“Growing up Married: Representing Child Brides in Film”
16.00 – 16.30 – Tea
16.40 – BATAS Annual General Meeting
Twenty-sixth Spring Symposium 2015
St Antony’s College, Oxford
Nissan Lecture Theatre
Saturday 25 April 2015
10.00am to 4.40pm
Symposium Programme
10.00 – 10.30 – Coffee, registration (in the Hilda Besse Building)
10.50 – Opening remarks (Michael Lake, President of BATAS)
11.00 – Dr Zeynep Kezer, University of Newcastle
“State penetration in eastern Turkey: Landscape, memory and identity in the early Republican years”
11.50 – Dr Pheroze Unwalla, York University, Toronto
“From battlefield to ‘theme park’: Centenary reflections on the transformation of Gallipoli”
12.45 – 14.00 – Break for lunch
14.10 – Professor Sami Zubaida, Birkbeck, University of London
“Turkey, alcohol and Islam”
15.00 – Antony Wynn, Freelance historian; author of Three Camels to Smyrna)
“Carpets in peace and war: The Oriental Carpet Manufacturers of Smyrna from 1908 to the early Republic”
16.00 – 16.30 – Tea
16.40 – Annual General Meeting
Twenty-fifth Spring Symposium 2014
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
The Upper Hall
Saturday 26 April 2014
10.00am to 4.30pm
Symposium Programme
10.00 – 10.30 – Coffee, registration (in the Upper Hall)
10.40 – Opening remarks (Celia Kerslake, Chairperson of BATAS)
10.50 – Dr Michael Axworthy, University of Exeter
“Tribes, Turks and Persians in the time of Nader Shah, 1698-1747”
11.45 – Dr Kerem Öktem, St Antony’s College, Oxford
“The contested territory of political Islam in Turkey: From coalition to fratricide”
12.45 – 14.10 – Break for lunch
14.15 – Professor George Hewitt, SOAS
“Caucasians in Turkey: Their distribution and languages”
15.10 – Dr Michael Ellison, University of Bristol
“Say I am You – Mevlana: A love story”
16.00 – 16.30 – Tea
16.40 – Annual General Meeting
Twenty-fourth Spring Symposium
Saturday 27 April 2013
St Antony’s College,
Oxford Nissan Lecture Theatre,
St Antony’s College, 62 Woodstock Road,
Oxford, OX2 6JF
Click here for the programme
TASG Twenty-third Spring Symposium
Saturday 5 May 2012
Emmanuel College, Cambridge
The Queen’s Building
Programme10.00 – 10.30 Registration and Coffee
10.45 – 11.35 Fadi Hakura (Associate Fellow, Chatham House)
Turkey’s role in international relations: The Middle East and beyond
11.40 – 12.30 Dr Ece Göztepe Çelebi (Faculty of Law, Bilkent University)
The constitution–making process in Turkey: Between law and politics
12.40 – 14.20 Lunch
14.25 – 15.15 Shahina Farid (UCL Institute of Archaeology)
“A Turkish Delight” – Life in an Anatolian city 9000 years ago: the excavations at Çatalhöyük
15.20 – 16.10 Dr Caroline Tee (Bristol University)
On the path of Pir Sultan? Engagement with authority in the modern Alevi movement
15.10 – Dr Michael Ellison, University of Bristol
“Say I am You – Mevlana: A love story”
16.15 – Tea
16.30 – Annual General Meeting