Esma Karadag

PhD candidate

PhD candidate at the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town. Guest researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden University.

She is a Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) scholarship holder to teach at Hacettepe University, Ankara. In May 2022, she was a research fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig, Germany, an internationally recognised textbook research centre. She obtained her MA in History from the University of Cape Town (2017), with a dissertation titled: “Late Ottoman Perspectives on the South African War (1899-1902): the Work of Ismail Kemal Vlora.”

Her doctoral research is an interdisciplinary study encompassing African studies and education. The research aims to contribute to contemporary intellectual thoughts and debates within the framework of Pan-Africanism, as a form of nationalism, by investigating how Pan-Africanism is taught in these institutions and how it is perceived by teachers and students. She is currently working on a research project on Sudanese, Tanzanian, and Somalian textbooks, which is supported by the Turkish Maarif Foundation.

Area of Interests:

Pan-Africanism, history textbooks, nation-building, migration, xenophobia, intellectual history, historiography, South African War of 1899–1902

Presentations:

    • “Sudan’s School Textbooks: Recognition of Diversity and the Image of the Other,” European Conference for African Studies (ECAS), Cologne, Germany, May 31– June 3, 2023.
    • “The Role of Education in Bilateral Relations: The Perception of Ottomans and Turks in Sudanese Textbooks,” Sudan in Transition and Sudan–Türkiye Relations, Istanbul, Turkey, October 27 – 28, 2022.

Publications:

    • Diler, Z. & Karadağ, E. (2023). Afrika’da Göç ve Zenofobi: Güney Afrika Cumhuriyeti Örneği, Anemon Muş Alparslan Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 11(Afrika), 31-45. http://dx.doi.org/10.18506/anemon.1303313
    • Çelik, Z., Karadağ, E., Başer, L. R. (2023). Sudan Ders Kitaplarında Osmanlı, Türk ve Türkiye İmgesi, Türkiye–Sudan İlişkileri: Toplumsal, Kültürel, Siyasi Bağlar, Özcan, M., Köse, M. eds., Afrika Vakfı Yayınları