Seda Altuğ is a historian of the modern Middle East with a focus on Syria, the late Ottoman Empire,
and modern Turkey. Her research critically engages the social histories of sectarianism, colonialism,
and state formation through the lenses of property, labor, migration, and political transformation. She
also works in memory studies and archival theory, with particular attention to how minority histories
and state violence are remembered, recorded, and contested.
Her doctoral dissertation, Sectarianism in the Syrian Jazira: Community, Land and Violence in the
Memories of World War I and the French Mandate (1915–1939), explored the interplay of land,
violence, and communal identities in a contested borderland region. Her current work expands this
research to examine land and property regimes in the late Ottoman East and French Mandate Syria,
tracing how imperial legacies of violence and property shaped state-society relations in a French
colonial context. She has been a fellow with Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe
(EUME), including as the recipient of the Irmgard Coninx Prize, and an affiliated researcher at the
Center for Global History at Freie Universität Berlin. She was awarded the Newton International
Fellowship by the British Academy. Her scholarly collaborations span academic institutions in
Turkey, the Middle East, and Europe. Her forthcoming publications include a co-authored volume,
Refugees in the Middle East (1856–1952) (Edinburgh University Press, 2026), a single authored
monograph titled Labour, Property and Sectarianism in Syria (1915–1951), and a research article on
the politics of archiving minorities in French Mandate Syria (Archival Studies, 2025) and labour and
sectarianism in Syrian Jazira (1921- 1955) (Studies in Race and Ethnicity, 2025)
