Onur Inal, Phd

Senior Researcher, University of Vienna, Austria

Onur İnal is a senior researcher in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna, where he directs the DANFront project (danfront.com), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2015. His research lies at the intersection of urban and environmental history, with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. He serves as a board member and secretary general of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH), where he served as the regional representative for Turkey from 2017 to 2025. He is the inaugural editor of Germinate: Environmental History Review, a digital journal published by the American Society of Environmental History (ASEH). He is currently working on his new book, Engineering Nature: Environment, Technology, and the Making of Modern Turkey (1923-1950), which is under contract with Leiden University Press.

Statement of interest:

What draws me to the INZ is its uniquely focused, interactive scholarly environment. Its small, highly selective cohort and strong emphasis on sustained interdisciplinary dialogue foster deep intellectual engagement rather than parallel work. During my fellowship at the INZ, I plan to advance “Engineering Nature: Environment, Technology, and the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923-1950,” my monograph in progress that lays the foundation for the yet-to-be-written environmental history of Modern Turkey, by deepening its depth and scope. I plan to examine Yugoslav newspapers and magazines from the interwar period to assess how Republican Turkey was perceived in Yugoslavia.

Selected Publications:

• Istanbul Unbound: Environmental Histories of the City. University of Utah Press, 2026 (edited with K. Mehmet Kentel)
• Gateway to the Mediterranean: An Environmental History of Late Ottoman Izmir. Cambridge University Press, 2025.
• Transforming Empire: The Ottomans from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. Brill, 2024. (edited with Serpil Atamaz and Alexander Schweig)
•  Seeds of Power: Explorations in Ottoman Environmental History. The White Horse Press, 2019.  (edited with Yavuz Köse)
•  Transforming Socio-Natures in Turkey: Landscapes, State and Environmental Movements. Routledge, 2019. (edited with Ethemcan Turhan)