Reşat Kasaba

Reşat Kasaba arrived in Seattle in 1985, shortly after receiving his Ph.D. in Sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Born in Turkey, Professor Kasaba completed his early education in that country and   received his B.S. in Economics and Statistics from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

In the past forty-one years, Professor Kasaba has taught some of the key courses in the Jackson School curriculum including States and Capitalism:  The Origins of the Global System (JSIS 200), State-Society Relations in the Third World, The Middle East in the Modern World, and the U.S War in Iraq. He also taught graduate seminars in International and Comparative Studies, Methods in International Studies, and Ottoman History. Professor Kasaba has advised 93 graduate students in the Jackson School, Near and Middle East Studies, and the departments of Sociology, History, Political Science, Geography, Anthropology, and Architecture. Professor Kasaba was awarded the University of Washington’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999 and he was recognized twice by the Jackson School Student Association with their Student Service Award, in 1994 and 2001.

Professor Kasaba’s main area of research is  the late Ottoman Empire, Turkey and the Modern Middle East. He has written books and articles on economic history, state-society relations, migration, ethnicity and nationalism, and urban history. Among his publications is  the volume four of the Cambridge History of Modern Turkey which he edited and “A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Empire, Migrants, and Refugees,” which received the Fuat Körülü  Book Award from the Turkish Studies Association in 2010. Professor Kasaba received grants from the Carnegie Corporation, Andrew Mellon Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the National Science Foundation.

Professor Kasaba served as the Director of the Henry M. Jackson School (2010 -2020), Director of the  Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Near and Middle East Studies, 2004-10, 2015-16, 2023-24), President of  the Association of Professional Schools of Public and International Affairs  (2018-2020), and President of the Turkish Studies Association (2008-10), member of the  Executive Board of the Middle East Studies Association (2015-18).

In 2024 Professor Kasaba received the Kadir Has Distinguished Social Scientist Award from the Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey and is a member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences.