Fellowship / Fellows

Tuna Şare Ağtürk

  • 2018–2019
  • Humanities
  • Hilles Bush Fellow
  • Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkey)
Headshot of Tuna Şare Ağtürk
Photo by Tony Rinaldo

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Tuna Şare Ağtürk is an associate professor of classical archaeology and art history at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey. Specializing in the art and archaeology of Asia Minor, she has extensively published on ancient dress and identity and on marble, ivory, and terracotta sculpture from Asia Minor. Her recent work in the Çukurbağ neighborhood of the modern city of İzmit has brought to light one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the last 25 years in Turkey: a monumental imperial complex with brightly painted reliefs from Nikomedia, Diocletian’s capital of the Roman Empire.

As the director of Çukurbağ Archaeological Project, Şare Ağtürk assembled a multidisciplinary team and has been investigating these finds with new archaeometric methods. While at Radcliffe Institute, she is writing a book on the history of Nikomedia as the forerunner of Constantinople and the technical and iconographic assessment of the recent finds within the context of Roman art and architecture. The book will also include sections on the challenges of urban archaeology and cultural heritage preservation in Turkey.

Şare Ağtürk studied archaeology and art history at Bilkent University, earned her PhD at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and was a visiting postdoc at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. She has received several awards and fellowships, including from the Getty Foundation and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. In order to create academic awareness for her Nikomedia discovery, she gave lectures at such institutions as Columbia University, the Louvre, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Uncovering an Ancient World (Harvard Gazette, 6/5/19)

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