Yasir Yilmaz, Czech Republic

Curriculum Vitae

Yasir Yilmaz is truly a cosmopolite: He taught at universities in the United States of America, Austria, his home country Republic of Turkey, and the Czech Republic. The intercultural exchange strongly influenced his career – and he also speaks highly of the experiences he made during his Richard Plaschka Fellowship in Austria. In Vienna, he carried out research for his own book project about the second Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. Although this seems like an extremely specialised field of research, he met several scientists dealing with related topics, as Vienna is one of the hotspots of research on this part of history.

Back in the Czech Republic he is currently working as an assistant professor of history at Palacky University in Olomouc, covering the history of Habsburg-Ottoman relations with a focus on diplomacy. Besides, Yasir Yilmaz still maintains good contacts with Austria. He is involved in a project called “Between Emperor and Sultan”, which is run by Dr. Michael Portman from the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Historical Research (INZ) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). In addition to this, Yasir Yilmaz organises a summer school together with Dr. Arno Strohmeyer, the vice director of INZ. Taking place this summer, the course will be a comparative study of Habsburg-Ottoman archival sources in Vienna. Beyond these topics, Yasir Yilmaz’s expertise lies in the early modern European empires, history of the Middle East and historical and present-day relations between the Islamic world and Europe.

Reflection

If there is a scientific field called “urban design”, Vienna globally represents the cutting-edge research in that field. It is simply a wonderful city. In fact, for someone involved in historical research, Vienna is heaven. The archives and libraries of this city are incredibly rich, they are easy to access and use, and – most importantly – they are perfectly organised.

Vienna is a city where you do not stand out as the culture and the residents are diverse. Whoever you are and whatever your background is, you may feel like you belong here. Vienna also surprises with new and innovative trends – another reason to always be fond of this city.

Wherever I go in the world, I compare it to Vienna, a city that is orderly, reliable, entertaining, versatile, multicultural, very old and very fresh at the same time. I think we all want to be like Vienna and that’s why this is the most beautiful city in the world.