The Lausanne Project

Mehdi Sajid tells Ozan Ozavci the story of Shakib Arslan, a member of the Syrian-Palestinian delegation at Lausanne who sought to keep the Ottoman dream alive.

The artist Spyros Aggelopoulos talks to Julia Secklehner about the importance of the folk hero Karagiozis in his work.

Laura Robson explains to Ozan Ozavci how international refugee policies of the early 1920s put the “enterprise” in “humanitarian enterprise.”

Olga Lafazani uses the contrasts between 1922-4 and 2015 to ask hard questions about whose interests are behind the conceptualization and management of "refugee crises".

Stefan Slater and David Macfadyen talk to Julia Secklehner about the how they are reviving interest in Aloïs Derso and Emery Kelèn, whose career as caricaturists to the League and United Nations was launched by a chance meeting at Lausanne.

Ilkim Büke Okyar and Konstantinos Travlos talk to Julia Secklehner about Greek and Turkish caricatures, a neglected resource for historians of identity and conflict in the decades around the Great War.

Kristina Gedgaudaite talks to Julia Secklehner about her research on cultural memory, migration, and graphic novels in contemporary Greek culture.

Enno Maessen takes Jonathan Conlin on a tour of Beyoğlus past, present and future, from the Deutsche Schule to Emek Sineması.

Aslı Iğsız and Jonathan Conlin discuss how a concept of civilisation has been represented and exploited, from the age of Ismet and Toynbee to that of Erdoğan, Samuel Huntington and Krishan Kumar.

Isaac Hand talks to Jonathan Conlin about his current research into inter-war Turkish urbanism, particularly the contested role of the muhtar.

Mari Firkatian tells Ozan Ozavci how she discovered the lost archives of the Stancioff family, uncovering the secrets of Nadejda Stancioff, the only woman diplomat at Lausanne.

Smyrna/İzmir was in ruins in September 1922. Philip Mansel explains to Ozan Ozavci how that unique entrepot changed from a Greek-cosmopolitan to a Turkish port town, and the devastating consequences of the Great Fire.

Howard Eissenstat shares with Ozan Ozavci his concerns around the language of post-post-Kemalism, before a lively discussion on Turgut Özal, the 1990s, and whether this might be Recep Tayyib Erdoğan's last year in power.

Martin van Bruinessen explains to Ozan Ozavci how Kurdish political movements in Turkey took hold from the 1960s onward, evolving from far-leftist activism and violence to demands for inclusive democracy.

Martin van Bruinessen explains to Ozan Ozavci how travels around the Middle East in the 1970s led him to devote his career to tracing the hopes and disappointments faced by the Kurds.

Julia Secklehner talks to Jamie Walters about her plans to bring the irrepressible American reporter Clare Sheridan back to life, and back to the streets of Lausanne.

Jonathan Conlin talks agency, emplotment and subjectivity with Laura Almagor and Haakon Ikonomou, editors of a new volume addressing global biography.

In the second half of their conversation Djene Rhys Bajalan and Ozan Ozavci consider the Kurds' relationship with Russia and Britain, the Kurdish perception of Lausanne, and the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion.

Djene Rhys Bajalan explains to Ozan Ozavci why we need to challenge traditional accounts of Kurdish political (in)activity around the Paris Peace Conference.

...what would the paintings say? Laura Popoviciu and Andrew Parratt explain to Jonathan Conlin how they curated the recent rehang of the UK Embassy in Ankara.

Elizabeth F. Thompson and Ozan Ozavci discuss Arab agency and exclusion at Lausanne, and its implications for the history of the wider Arab world, past and present.

Lerna Ekmekçioğlu and Ozan Ozavci discuss the Armenian mission to Lausanne in 1922-3, the (performative) support they received from the Allied Powers and the Turkish response to plans for an autonomous Armenian Home.

Ellinor Morack explains to Jonathan Conlin how she unpicked the tangled process of expropriation and re-allocation by which early Republican Turkey sought to create a "national economy".

Ozan Ozavci invites İlker Aytürk to develop his critical response to Erik-Jan Zürcher's arguments in last month's TLP podcast.

Jonathan Conlin talks to Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal about Britain's short-lived post-WWI empire in the eastern Mediterranean.