Dr Hatice Yıldız

Lecturer in Modern Gender History since 1750

Biography

Background

I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, where I completed a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and International Relations, and a Master’s degree in Comparative Studies in History and Society. My undergraduate and postgraduate studies were largely funded by competitive scholarships, including one from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. In 2013, I relocated to the UK after receiving a postgraduate research scholarship from the Cambridge International Trust. I completed my PhD in History at the University of Cambridge in 2018, exploring women's factory labour in Ottoman Bursa and colonial Bombay. From 2017 to 2021, I held postdoctoral positions at Merton College, University of Oxford, and the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University. Since September 2020, I have been teaching at the University of Edinburgh.

My research has taken me to archives in three countries and seven cities, including Istanbul, Bursa, Cambridge, London, Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata. I have shared the insights from my work at various workshops and conferences across the UK, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and India. My teaching covers a broad range of subjects within global, gender, and labour history, with topics spanning from the Indian Rebellion to the roles of Ottoman craftswomen in the nineteenth century.

 

Undergraduate teaching

Gender and Work: A Global Survey from 1750 to WWII

Ottoman Modernities: Society, Economy, and Culture in the 19th Century

Contributions to Team-Taught Courses:

Historical Skills and Methods I 

Global Connections since 1450 (Course Organiser 2023-2025, Lecturer, and Tutor) 

The Global Economy since 1750 (Lectures: 'Asia on the Verge of Great Divergence' and 'The Industrial Revolution: Asia's Divergent Path')

Introduction to Historiography (Lecture: 'Fatema Mernissi: Questioning Patriarchy')

History Dissertation

Postgraduate teaching

Gender, Empire, and Labour in the Nineteenth Century: Perspectives from the Wider World

Gender, Empire, and Labour in the Nineteenth Century: Perspectives from the Wider World (online)

Contributions to Team-Taught Courses:

Historical Research: Skills and Sources (Pathway: 'Women in Ottoman History: Using Life Writings and Images')

Historical Methodology (Pathway: 'E. P. Thompson and His Legacy')

Economic and Social Theory for Historians (Seminar: 'Marx and Historical Materialism')

Dissertation, Taught MSc in History

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I am interested in supervising doctoral dissertations that delve into the gendered dynamics of work, whether paid or unpaid, in the late Ottoman Empire and colonial India. I am particularly passionate about projects that explore gender in professional settings during these periods. I encourage interdisciplinary approaches that combine historical analysis with insights from gender studies, sociology, anthropology, and political science. Potential research topics might include the impact of economic changes on gender roles, the intersection of gender with race and class within professional occupations, or the evolution of gender ideologies in these regions over time.

Current PhD students supervised

Ilaeira Agrotou Georgiou, PhD, The University of Edinburgh. "Gender and Class in Twentieth-Century Rural Cyprus." Lead Supervisor.

Zuzubee Huidrom, PhD, The University of Edinburgh. "Manipuri Women in the Battle of Imphal During the Second World War." Lead supervisor.

Defne Özözer, PhD, Université de Paris, 1. Una Europe Doctoral Programme in Cultural Heritage. "Intercommunal Relations between the Jewish Communities of Salonica and İzmir During the Transformation Period from Empire to Nation-State (1912–1943)." Expert Committee Member.

 

 

Research summary

Places: 

  • South Asia 

  • Mediterranean

  • Near/Middle East

Themes: 

  • Comparative & Global History
  • Economic History
  • Gender
  • Imperialism
  • Labour

Periods: 

  • Nineteenth Century

Research interests

My research explores the intersections of gender, economic, and social histories in South Asia and the Ottoman Empire. I investigate the ways in which occupational categories have been gendered in response to economic liberalisation and bureaucratic consolidation in the period roughly between 1750 and World War I. My PhD thesis and subsequent studies have examined factory labour in silk manufacturing in Western Anatolia and cotton spinning in Western India. My published articles and book chapters have highlighted how concepts and applications of skill, technology, and work evolved in tandem with the gender ideologies of imperial governments, capitalist merchants, and contending political movements in these regions.  

Current research interests

Building on my earlier work on factory employment, I am currently engaged in a project that broadens my scope to upper-middle class professions. My new research examines the roles of women in medicine and law, with a focus on Indian and Ottoman female physicians in the early twentieth century. I am particularly interested in the ways in which women from non-elite backgrounds formed networks across national and imperial boundaries to consolidate their professional identities and promote their economic and political interests.

Affiliated research centres

 

Hatice Yıldız, 'Parallels and Contrasts in Gendered Histories of Industrial Labour in Bursa and Bombay 1850 – 1910', The Historical Journal, v. 60, no. 2 (June 2017): 443- 470.

Hatice Yıldız, 'The Politics of Time in Colonial Bombay: Labor Patterns and Protest in Cotton Mills', Journal of Social History 54, no.1 (Fall 2020): 206-285.

Can Nacar and Hatice Yıldız, 'Labor History' in The Cambridge Companion to Ottoman History, Alex Norman Wick, ed., Cambridge University Press (2025): 145- 156.

 

Forthcoming:

Hatice Yıldız, 'Gender and Labor', in The Oxford Handbook of Global Labor History, Oxford University Press, 2027.

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