Mentorship: Islamic Art and Archtecture

Service Description

Mentorship for Graduate Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture This is an individualized one-to-one coaching and mentoring program for graduate students working on the history of Islamic art and architecture, or related fields. The sessions are tailored to the participant's academic background, research interests, and professional goals. Through individual consultations, participants can receive guidance on developing research questions, identifying and evaluating sources, reading and interpreting visual and material evidence, designing research projects, preparing conference papers and publications, navigating academic resources, and developing a longer-term research or academic plan. The program is particularly suitable for students who would benefit from sustained individual guidance alongside their university studies or independent research. While the session titles below provide a guideline, the program will be shaped according to the individual needs of the student, discussed in the first session Session 1: Defining Your Research Interests and Academic Goals Session 2: From Topic to Research Question: Developing a Research Project Session 3: Building a Bibliography and Organizing Your Research Session 4: Understanding the Scholarship: Developing a Literature Review Session 5: Working with Material and Digital Sources Session 6: Finding and Evaluating Primary and Secondary Sources Session 7: Developing an Argument: From Evidence to Interpretation Session 8: Drafting, Rewriting, Editing Session 9: From Research to Conference Paper, Article, or Thesis Chapter Session 10: Research Presentation and Academic Communication Özlem Yıldız received her PhD in Art History at Temple University in 2026. She holds an MA in History of Art and Architecture of the Islamic Middle East from SOAS University of London, and another MA in History from Sabancı University. Her doctoral thesis, titled “Illustrating the Lives of the Prophets in Sixteenth-Century Islamic Manucripts”, examines Safavid and Ottoman illustrated manuscripts of Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyā’ (Tales of the Prophets) and related texts in a semiological framework, around the themes of sign, gender, intertextuality, and politics. Dr. Yıldız held research fellowships at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and at ANAMED (Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations). Her research has been supported by The Historians of Islamic Art Association, The Barakat Trust, and TÜBİTAK and other institutions.