Why Istanbul?

There are countless reasons to come to Istanbul! Why am I here? Well, we have the biggest archives in the world: the Ottoman state archives that has literally millions of documents on any topic you can imagine about modern Ottoman history, i.e. from the 17. to the early 20. centuries. A mine of information for anyone who wants to do serious research in Ottoman studies. My field as a research assistant right now are Irano-Ottoman relations. Happy digging :)