Assoc. Prof. M. Erdem Kabadayı has been awarded “European Research Council Starting Grant”

updated at: published at:

İstanbul Bilgi University Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Faculty Member Assoc. Prof. M. Erdem Kabadayı’s work titled “Industrialisation and Urban Growth from the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey in a Comparative Perspective, 1850-2000” became one of the two most comprehensive projects from Turkey to receive EU support in the area of social sciences and humanities. 

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSBF) History Department Member Assoc. Prof. M. Erdem Kabadayı has been awarded the “European Research Council Starting Grant”, one of the most prestigious scientific research support programs. Kabadayı’s research project “Industrialisation and Urban Growth from the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey in a Comparative Perspective, 1850-2000” will be funded by the European Research Council of the EU for five years. 

Under this project which will be undertaken by a team of 23 for four years, sixteen M.A. and three PhD students will be able to receive scholarship. This grant, which is given to interdisciplinary projects that have an innovative perspective and potential to contribute to science worldwide, is around 1,500,000 Euro.  As its name suggests, the project will address the mutual relations between industrialization and urbanization in our country spanning a period of one and a half century. This is one the first two projects in Social Sciences and Humanities that are supported by the ERC in Turkey and is the first and the only one in the field of history. This grant of the ERC is a program that fastidiously selects from among a large number of applications. 

Assoc. Prof. M. Erdem Kabadayı is known for his research in economic history.