Meryem Demir
Office Hours: By appointment
Meryem Demir is the Preceptor in Modern Turkish in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. Before joining Harvard in July 2018, she was the Atatürk Turkish Fellow in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh and served as a lecturer in Turkish at the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) in Ankara for seven years.
She holds a BA from Istanbul University and an MA from Marmara University in Turkish Education, as well as a PhD in Turkish Literature from Bilkent University. Her dissertation, titled “Youths of the Young Literature: Youths, Future, and the Ideals in the Late Ottoman Novel,” explores youth and idealism in the context of Ottoman modernization.
Dr. Demir has taught a wide range of courses, including Turkish (as both a native and foreign language), Critical Reading, Culture and Society, Literary Criticism, Oral Communication, and Written Expression, and Advanced Topics in Turkish Language, Literature, and Culture. Her research interests include Modern Turkish Language and Literature, late 19th- and early 20th-century Ottoman modernization, literary criticism, discourse analysis, and stylistics. In addition to several academic publications, she is also a published short story writer.
She has been recognized multiple times for excellence in teaching by the Harvard College Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. In 2022 and 2024, she received the Harvard University Provost’s Award for her innovative and sustainable digital project, ZIPIR Turkish: Istanbul Streets Walls’ Writing. She was also nominated for the MAFLT LCTL Innovation Award at Michigan State University.
Her work reflects a deep commitment to innovative pedagogy and to advancing the study of Turkish language and literature, while fostering cross-cultural understanding and critical engagement with modern Turkish texts.