research directory

History and Philosophy of Science, Sociology, Sociology of Religion

Yalçinkaya, M. Alper

Turkey

Overview

Alper Yalçinkaya is a Lecturer in Sociology at TED University in Ankara, Turkey.

His main areas of research include public understanding of science, history of concepts, and the cultural politics of science and technology, with an emphasis on the Middle East and Turkey. He is the author of Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2015), as well as several articles and book chapters on science and religion, most recently in The Warfare between Science and Religion: The Idea That Wouldn’t Die (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). Yalçinkaya’s current research focuses on the history of the “Islam and science” debate in Turkey from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, and analyzes the construction of the categories of “science” and “religion” within debates on science and Islam, as well as the role of transnational actors like missionaries and technical experts in these debates.