In addition to supporting the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, OTSA membership helps support prizes, awards, and scholarships issued to students and scholars on an annual basis.

Call for Submissions 2025 Awards and Prizes
The Ottoman and Turkish Studies (OTSA) is pleased to announce its annual award
and prize competitions for 2025. Five award competitions are listed in this
announcement, the last three of which are administered by the American
Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages (AATT). Please read the instructions for
each carefully, noting the deadlines and details for the submission of materials.
OTSA encourages scholars and students to apply for awards and invites teachers to
encourage their students to apply as well!

  1. OTSA BOOK PRIZE ($1000)
  2. OTSA Article Prize ($300)
  3. OTSA GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER PRIZE ($200)
  4. VANGELIS KECHRIOTIS MEMORIAL TRAVEL GRANT ($500)
  5. THE MÜTEFERRİQA AWARD FOR DIGITAL OTTOMAN AND TURKISH
    STUDIES ($5,250)

  1. OTSA BOOK PRIZE ($1000)
    An annual prize awarded to the most outstanding book in the field of Ottoman and
    Turkish studies published in the previous year (copyright date of 2024), sponsored
    by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association with the generous support of our
    dues-paying membership. Nominations may be made by the author, colleagues,
    publisher, or friends. Translated books, edited volumes, fiction, and textbooks are
    not eligible. Submissions must be in English.

    Conditions for submission:
  • Three copies of the nominated book should be provided.
  • A copy to each one of the reviewers listed below, along with the address,
    phone number, and e-mail of the author. Nominations will be
    acknowledged by the chair of the committee via e-mail upon receipt of all
    the three copies.
  • No additional materials will be considered as part of the submission.
  • Postmark deadline: no later than July 1, 2025

    Copies of the books and nominations should be sent to the following addresses:
    Professor Samuel Dolbee
    Department of History
    2301 Vanderbilt Place
    PMB 351802
    Nashville, TN 37235

    Professor Marlene Schäfers
    Avenue Clémentine 7
    1190 Brussels
    Belgium

    Professor Alexis Rappas
    Koç University
    College of Social Sciences and Humanities
    Rumelifeneri yolu
    Sariyer 34450 Istanbul
    Türkiye
  1. THE OTSA ARTICLE PRIZE
    By decision of the OTSA board, the OTSA Article prize will now be awarded on an
    annual basis, rather than a biennial basis. This prize is awarded for an outstanding
    article in the field of Ottoman and Turkish Studies. The prize will be awarded to
    articles published in the previous year (Jan. 2024-Dec. 2024). Only ONE submission
    may be made per author.
    If an author appears as a co-author on a second submission, that is allowable only
    if the nomination is made by the co-author or a third party (e.g. Can Sinov may not
    nominate their co-authored paper with Roxelana Osmanova if Sinov has already
    nominated a solo authored paper, the co-authored paper may still be considered if
    nominated by Osmanova, or a third party). Eligible submissions include peerreviewed
    journal articles and peer-reviewed chapters in edited volumes. Pre-print
    digital editions of articles published in 2024 which will appear in journal volumes in
    2025 or later are eligible, with the proviso that the same article cannot then be
    submitted for consideration in a subsequent year. Articles which appeared in preprint
    in 2024 but will be included in a 2025 journal volume may be submitted for
    consideration next year (2026), provided the pre-print was not first submitted for a
    prior award. Submissions must be in English.
    Nominations may be made by the author, colleagues, publisher, or friends.

    Applicants must submit the following in an e-mail:
  • The recommender’s name, address, and e-mail address
  • The address, e-mail address, and phone number of the author
  • An electronic copy (as a pdf) of the article
    No additional materials will be considered as part of the submission
    Materials should be e-mailed to the committee chair, Professor Joshua White
    (jmw4xd@virginia.edu) with “OTSA Article Prize” in the subject line of the e-mail
    message.
    Deadline for receipt of materials: no later than July 1, 2025.
  1. OTSA GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER PRIZE ($200)
    An annual prize for the best paper in Turkish or Ottoman studies written by a
    graduate student in Turkish or Ottoman studies during the preceding academic
    year (2024-25 for the award given in 2025). This award is sponsored by the
    Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association with the generous support of our duepaying
    membership. The winning paper will be considered for publication in
    the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies (JOTSA).

    Applications should include:
  • a PDF copy of the paper. It must be a separate, stand-alone paper (15-35
    pages) with bibliography. A dissertation chapter that has not been
    reworked as a separate paper or that does not fall within the page range
    will not be accepted.
  • the institutional affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail of the
    author
  • the name and email address of the author’s academic advisor
  • No additional materials will be considered as part of the submission.
    Materials should be emailed to the chair of the prize committee, Professor Yağmur
    Karakaya (Yagmur.karakaya@yale.edu).
    Deadline for receipt of materials: July 1, 2025
  1. VANGELIS KECHRIOTIS MEMORIAL TRAVEL GRANT ($500)
    This grant will be awarded in memory of Professor Vangelis Kechriotis (1969-2015)
    to a doctoral candidate undertaking a research trip for his/her dissertation. The
    grant recipient will be selected by a panel of scholars based on the relevance and
    potential contribution of the proposed work to the fields and concerns important to
    Professor Kechriotis, such as the history of Ottoman non-Muslims, Greek-Ottoman
    and Greek-Turkish relations, or Ottoman Balkan Studies. The selected applicant will
    be expected to acknowledge the Vangelis Kechriotis Memorial Travel Grant in
    his/her dissertation and in any subsequent publications that result from the
    research supported by this grant.
    Applicants for the grant are asked to submit the following: a current CV, a copy of
    the applicant’s dissertation proposal, a description of the specific research trip to be
    undertaken, a working budget, including what other funds have already been
    secured, a letter of recommendation from the applicant’s dissertation advisor,
    addressing the applicant’s qualifications and the significance of the research she/he
    will be undertaking. (Letters should be printed on official stationery and scanned
    before sending by email).
  • a current CV
  • a copy of the applicant’s dissertation proposal
  • a description of the specific research trip to be undertaken
  • a working budget, including what other funds have already been secured
  • a letter of recommendation from the applicant’s dissertation advisor,
    addressing the applicant’s qualifications and the significance of the
    research they will be undertaking. Letters should be on official stationery
    and submitted as an attachment to email.
  • No additional materials will be considered as part of the submission.
    Materials should be emailed to secretariattsa@gmail.com with “KECHRIOTIS TRAVEL
    GRANT” in the subject line of the email message.
    Deadline for submission of materials: July 1, 2025
  1. THE MÜTEFERRİQA AWARD FOR DIGITAL OTTOMAN AND TURKISH STUDIES
    With the generous support of Miletos, OTSA has established a new prize to support
    promising scholarship in the field of Digital Ottoman and Turkish Studies by early
    career researchers. This award is meant to support work by promising advanced
    undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars who have completed their Ph.D.
    within the last three years (no earlier than July 2022). The award will consist of three
    annual payments of $1,750 for a total of $5,250. The award will be given to the
    applicant who can best demonstrate potential for a major scholarly contribution
    using available tools and methods of digital Ottoman and Turkish Studies. This
    award is not meant for the development of new digital tools – the end product
    should be a work of scholarship, either a dissertation, book, journal article, book
    chapter, or other analytical scholarly contribution.
    Applicants should submit the following to Professor Akın Sefer,
    akin.sefer@khas.edu.tr, chair of the award committee:
  • A Current CV
  • A written description of the scholarly work to be undertaken with the support
    of this award, no longer than five double-spaced pages, 12-point font.
  • A sample of academic writing that employs digital tools and methods. This
    may be a published or unpublished work, including a journal article, term
    paper, or book chapter, not exceeding 20,000 words.
  • The institutional affiliation, address, phone number, and e-mail of the author.
  • If the applicant is currently enrolled as a student, the name and contact
    information of their academic supervisor.
    Deadline for submission of materials: July 1, 2025

    Information about Miletos: Miletos, Inc., is a Turkish artificial intelligence company
    that introduced Muteferriqa (https://muteferriqa.com/en), a searchable database of
    Ottoman Turkish printed books, journals, and newspapers, which are held at the
    Seyfettin Özege Collection at Atatürk University and the Hakkı Tarık Us Collection at
    Beyazıt State Library. OTSA hosted an online demonstration of an earlier version of
    Muteferriqa at the inaugural session of the OTSA Co-Op in July 2021
    (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LaTM4nFHec). The new version, which is
    currently available for trial at several research institutions worldwide, includes all
    the holdings of both collections, as well as transliteration into modern Turkish,
    translation into English, and image search, in addition to full-text search
    functionality that was already available in the earlier version the database of which
    was limited with a small selection of the two collections.