Gülru Necipoğlu

Necipoğlu attended the Robert College of Istanbul, a high school, graduating in 1975. She received a degree in art history from Wesleyan University. In 1982, she received a master's degree in Islamic art and architecture from Harvard University. Four years later, she obtained her PhD for her dissertation titled The Formation of an Ottoman Imperial Tradition: The Topkapı Palace in the 15th and 16th Centuries, under the guidance of Oleg Grabar.[1]

Necipoğlu started work at Harvard as an assistant professor in 1987. Between 1989–1993, she was the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities. Since 1993, she has been the Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art (succeeding Oleg Grabar)[2] as well as Director of the Aga Khan Islamic Architecture Program.[1]

Necipoğlu has been a Member of the American Philosophical Society since 2007,[3] and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 2008.[4]

Gülru Necipoğlu is married to Cemal Kafadar.[5]

Necipoğlu has worked on the medieval and the early modern periods of Islamic history, concentrating on the Mediterranean basin and the eastern Islamic lands. Her work on the Topkapı Scroll is established a solid academic foundation, and was lauded with the Albert Hourani Book Award as well as the Spiro Kostof Book Award. Her book on Sinan won the Fuat Köprülü Book Prize in 2006.

She has focussed on the visual culture and architecture of the Ottoman period, the comparative study of the Ottoman and Safavid empires, and the cultural exchanges between the Byzantines, the Islamic world and Renaissance Italy.

An example of the practices common to the Italian and Islamic worlds, Necipoğlu in her article "The Suburban Landscape of 16th century Istanbul as a Mirror of Classical Ottoman Garden Culture" showed that the Ottomans took elements of the Greco-Roman villa and combined them with Safavid garden design, thereby synthesising forms that could be said to belong to the Mediterranean ethos shared with the Italians.[6]