Timur Hammond is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He received a Ph.D. and M.A. in geography from the University of California, Los Angeles (2016, 2010), and a B.A. in English/creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2005). Prior to joining the faculty at Syracuse University, he worked in the Department of Geography at the University of Vermont.

Trained as an urban and cultural geographer, his research draws on archival and ethnographic methods to explore the intersection between urban experience and religious belief in 20th-century Turkey, with a particular focus on the Istanbul district of Eyüp. His research has been supported by a number of institutions, including the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Institute of Turkish Studies, and the Fulbright-IIE. This work has been published in several venues, including City and his forthcoming book "Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in 20th Century Istanbul."

More recent research has moved in a variety of directions, including reflecting on the conceptual and institutional relationships between geography and Middle East area studies, discussing the geographies of urban heritage in the Middle East, and analyzing the contested geographies of memory that have emerged following Turkey’s July 2016 coup attempt.

Links to his publications can be found on Google Scholar, Academia, and Experts@Syracuse.

He has also partnered with colleagues at Syracuse University and a variety of other Central New York institutions, including joining the Landscape Studies at SU group, helping to coordinate an ‘Unlearning the Urban’ seminar series with Lawrence Chua (Architecture), participating in the work of the Community-Engaged Public Humanities working group, collaborating with colleagues to start the Urban Natures working group, and organizing a digital faculty writing group. He also serves as the department’s faculty representative for Syracuse University’s Future Professoriate Program; some of his work with that program led to a short article discussing strategic planning for graduate students in Inside Higher Education.

Selected Publications

Timur Hammond. 2023. Placing Islam: Geographies of Connection in 20th Century Istanbul. [In production, to be published in 2023 as part of the University of California Press Islamic Humanities series.]

Timur Hammond. 2022. “Making the Millet Common: Rethinking Authoritarian Politics Through Commemoration Following Turkey’s July 2016 Coup Attempt. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, [ahead of inclusion in an issue]. Retrieved from https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1973

Timur Hammond. 2020. “Religion and the City”, in Armando Salvatore, Sari Hanafi, and Kieko Obuse (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East (online edn, Oxford Academic, 10 Nov. 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190087470.013.36

Timur Hammond. 2020. “Making Memorial Publics: Media, Monuments, and the Politics of Commemoration Following Turkey’s July 2016 Coup Attempt.” Geographical Review. Vol. 110, no. 4, p. 536-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/00167428.2019.1702429

Timur Hammond. 2020. “Heritage and the Middle East: Cities, Power, and Memory.” Geography Compass. Vol. 14, no. 2, p. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12477

Elizabeth Angell, Timur Hammond, and Danielle van Dobben Schoon. 2014. “Assembling Istanbul: Buildings and Bodies in a World City.” Introduction to Special Feature. City. Vol. 18, no. 6, p. 644-654. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2014.962882.