Isa Blumi Professor

Professor Blumi has taught courses in Anthropology, Comparative Politics, Theory, and American, Islamic and World History for more than 25 years. Prior to joining Stockholm University, Professor Blumi regularly taught a full range of interdisciplinary courses that emphasized comparative, trans-regional cases that taught advanced students how to criticially engage their themes of interest. For the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Professor Blumi has developed and taught these courses:

Middle East: Religions and Early History; Early Modern History of the Middle East, 1500-1920; Contemporary History of the Middle East, 1820-2020; Middle East Studies: Sources; Politics and Development of the Middle East; Perspectives of Middle Eastern Studies; An Introduction to the Middle East; and Human Rights in the Middle East

As of August 1, 2024, Isa Blumi is Director of PhD Studies at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 

Here is a list of graduate supervision and their current positions:

MA Projects Supervised while at Stockholm University (defended):

"Orientalism Is Not Dead: Discursive (Dis-)Continuities in the Construction of the ‘Middle Eastern Other’ in German Migration Politics," Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University), MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed January 2026).

“Contours of Controversy: The Role of the Tantura Incident in Israeli-Palestinian Historical Discourse,” Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University), MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed January 2025). Currently PhD candidate, Ghent University.

"Humanitarian Aid in Northern Syria: Challenges, Adaptations, and Complexities: An Analysis of OCHA's Aid Delivery after the 2023 earthquake in Idlib Governorate." Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University), MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed January 2025).

“A qualitative descriptive study on fisheries development in the Aden Colony and the Aden Protectorate during British Colonial rule,” Dept. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University), MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed January 2025).

“Exploring the Evolution of Family Law in Damascus from Pre-Reform Practices to the 1953 Code: A Comparative History of Sunni Family Law in Syria,” Dept of Asian and ME Studies (Stockholm University), MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed January 2025).

"Shifting Ideological Commitments and Political Practices in Al-Jamaʿa Al-Islamiyya: From Radicalism to Moderation and Back." Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed August 2024).

"Kemalism, Politics, and Social Transformation Under Atatürk (1923-1938): Navigating Reformation through Visual Propaganda." Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed August 2024).

“Echoes of Dissent: Unravelling Anti-Government Discourse in Turkish Rap Music (2014-2019),” Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed August 2023). Student Currently PhD Candidate, La Sapienza University in Rome.

“Women and Shii Reformism: Gender Discourses in the Shii Reformation Movement in Iran at the Beginning of the 20th Century,” Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed August 2023). Student currently PhD Candidate, Lund University.

"Navigating Past the Crucible and into the Blue: The Water Energy Nexus: The bold plan signed by Israel, Jordan and the UAE addressing climate, peace and trade. Can the promise of a better future really be wrested from the clutches of past conflict in the Middle East?." Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed May 2023).

“Jag bor i Libanon… jag vill begå självmord” och 19 andra suicidrelaterade nyhetsartiklar: En studie om suicidrepresentation i officiell suicidstatistik och I inhemsk massmedia i ett krisdrabbat Libanon 2008–2022” [”I live in Lebanon… I want to commit suicide” and 19 other suicide-related articles: A study of suicide representation in official suicide statistics and in domestic mass media in a crisis-ridden Lebanon 2008–2022], Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Supervisor (Completed May 2023).

“@fashionwithfaith, Fashion without prejudice: A case study on Sweden’s modest fashion influencer Imane Asry,” Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor (Completed December 2022). Currently Employed in the French Ministry of Culture.

“The Tourist Industry's Role in Shaping the Israeli Illegal Settlements in the West Bank,” Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor, (Completed June 2022).

“NGOs and Armenian Diasporas: A Post Ottoman Story,” Middle East Studies Department, University of Georgia, USA, (defended November, 2019). Currently PhD Candidate, University of Georgia.

“We Are Not Going Anywhere: An Ethnographic Field Study of Syrian Refugee (im)mobility,” Asian and Middle East Studies Department, (Stockholm University) MA Thesis Supervisor, (Completed August 2018) Defended Doctorate at Department of Anthropology, Graduate Institute, Geneva. Currently Post-doc in Geneva.

“Late Ottoman Perspectives on the South African War (1899-1902): The Work of Ismail Kemal Vlora,” Historical Studies, University of Cape Town, South Africa, (defended May 2018). Member of faculty review committee, invited by supervisor, Dr. Shamil Jeppie.

“A Peace Work: Swedish Involvement in the Mosul-Question, 1924-1925,” Asian and Middle East Studies Department, (Stockholm University), MA Thesis Supervisor, (Defended, July 2018). Currently employed at SIDA.

“Challenging Conventional Narratives: Syrian Refugees in Egypt,” Middle East Studies Department, Stockholm University, Completed (September 2017). Formally PhD candidate, Social Anthropology, Stockholm University.

“NGO Work and Syrian Refugees: Lebanon’s Bekka Valley,” Middle East Studies Department, Stockholm University Completed (September 2017).

“Saudi-Iranian Geopolitical Rivalry in Syria,” Political Science Dept., Western Sydney University, Completed (October 2016). Currently director, Center for Syncretic Studies.

PhD Supervision and/or Committee Member:

• “Knowing China: Forms, Agency, and Knowledge Production in the Late Ottoman Empire," Department of History (Koç University), PhD committed directed by Kerem Tınaz and Alexis Wick (defended January 20, 2026).

• “Unveiling Bosnian Islam: Muslim public discourses on the Woman Question in Bosnian and Herzegovina between 1878 and 1945,” Center for the Study of Religion (Leiden U.), PhD committee directed by Maurits Berger, (defended September 24, 2025).

• “ABŪ AL-HUDĀ AL-ṢAYYĀDĪ AND ISLAMIC CONSERVATISM DURING THE REIGN OF ABDÜLHAMID II (1878-1908),” Department of History and Archaeology (American University of Beirut), Member of PhD dissertation committee directed by Lyall Armstrong and Alexis Wick, (defended January 30, 2025).

• “Late Ottoman Bureaucratic Reforms: The Case of Libya,” Department of Middle Eastern Studies (University of California, Los Angeles-UCLA), member of PhD dissertation committee directed by James Gelvin, (Defended May 15, 2022). Currently Assistant Professor, Eastern Michigan University

• “Staging Violence, Singing Hope: Trauma, Memory, and Affect in Three Musical and Dance Performances by North Korean Migrants in South Korea,” Department of Asian, Middle East and Turkish Studies (Stockholm University) Examination Committee (defended December 11, 2021).

• “Structured Agencies of the Paramilitaries in the Turkish-Kurdish Conflict,” Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, (Copenhagen University) Co-Supervisor, (defended June 2021). Currently Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Defence Studies, King's College, London

• “Navigating Access, Aspiring Privilege. A Critical Anthropology of Maghreb-Muslim Mobilities in between the EU and UAE,” Department of Social Anthropology (Universities of Leuven and Amsterdam), secondary supervisor, directed by Annelies Moors, defended June 2021. Awarded post-doc fellowship NTU-Singapore, Visiting Faculty Georgetown University-Doha and Post-Doc fellow University of Ghent.

• “Belgium’s Conflicted Relationship with the Ottoman Empire, 1850-1918,” (History Department, University of Antwerp, Belgium), co-supervisor, (Defended June 2017). Currently Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Amsterdam.

• “Kemalism and the Soviet Union: Ideological Transformations in Turkey and Problems of Interpretation, 1920-1970s,” Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, external member of committee, directed by Anne K. Bang, (Defended September 2017). Currently Associate Professor of Political Science, American University of Armenia.

• “South Asians in Kenya: Losing Independence, 1935-1968,” (defended, 2017). History Dept. GSU, Currently Associate Professor, History Department, Spelman College.

• “Trial by Fire: Ottoman Nationalism in Transition from Empire to Republic, 1908-1926,” Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, (Defended September 2016).

• “The Paradox of Virtue: Helsinki Human Rights Activism during the Cold War (1975-1995),” (History Department, University of Antwerp) Member of Defence Committee directed by Maarten van Ginderachter, defended April 2015. Post-doc Fellow, Ghent University.

Recent Public Lectures, Keynotes, Workshops and Academic Engagements

2025

“Power & Society in the Arabian Peninsula: The Gulf Arab States and Yemen,” presented to course “Contemporary Politics of the Global South.” Department of Conflict and Development Studies, University of Ghent (12 December 2025) Ghent, Belgium.

“Sub-imperial Power in Arabia: The Gulf Arab States and their Precarious Regional Role in Sudan and Beyond” Invited by Department of Conflict and Development Studies, the Conflict Research Group, and the Middle East and North Africa Research Group. University of Ghent (11 December 2025) Ghent, Belgium.

“Europe in Spatial Flux: Muslim Migration and the (Re)Making of a Continent,” Round Table: Spatial Imaginations of Europe, 1870s-2020s: Ideas, Politics, Economics and Law, INNER_LEAGUE Project: INNER_LEAGUE: A social-bureaucratic history of the League of Nations Secretariat. University of Copenhagen (9 December 2025) Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Medieval Challenges to Modern Capitalist Imperialism: A Genealogy of North Yemen’s Efforts at Joint Resistance to Empire,” Workshop: The Middle East and the Making of Global Anti-Imperialism: Histories of the 20th Century, Finnish Institute in the Middle East (5 December, 2025) Beirut, Lebanon.

“Reorientating Albanians towards/away a Global Ottoman History, 1800-1925,” Obserseminar, Forschungsprogleme der Turkologie und Iranistik, Lüdwig Maximilian University, December 1, 2025, (Munich, Germany).

“Trapped in a Neo-imperial Whirlpool: Albania, Globalization and the Post-Cold War World” Workshop: The 1990s as a Time of Unmaking and Remaking Albania, Lüdwig Maximilian University, November 29, 2025, (Munich, Germany).

“Bridging the Capitalist Transition: Ottoman Subjects and their Role in Ordering the New World” Seminar for Project “Crossing Through Decadence (ATR20240154403)” Institute of Social History “Valentin de Foronda”, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, November 25, 2025, (Vitoria-Gasteiz, Basque/Spain).

“The Gulf States Role in the Ruin of Sudan, Yemen, Syria, and Palestine,” Gizartea, Politika, Kultura Doktorego Programa, Gizarte eta Komunikazio Zientzien Fakultatea, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, November 24, 2025, (Bilbao, Basque/Spain).

“A Political Economy of Sanctions: The Tools of Militarized Accumulation in World,” Department of Middle East Studies, Georgetown University, October 29, 2025 (Washington DC).

"Chaotic Crossroads: The Socio-Economic Impact of Refugee (un)Settlement on (Post)Ottoman Kosova’s Transportation Infrastructure," for the working group on the ERC Advanced Grant project called “Infrastructural Imperialism: Global ‘Big Brothers’ and Geopolitical Futures.” based in the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, October 18, 2025, (Prishtina, Kosova)

“From the Balkans to the Gulf: Correcting Blurred Frontiers in the Umma, 1850-1924” Frontiers in the Umma: On the Sunni-Shii Borderlands in the Ottoman Middle East, French Institute for Anatolian Studies, May 30, 2025 (Istanbul, Turkey).

Panel Discussant: “A Fairer World is Possible,” organized by the Directorate of Communications of the Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye. May 22, 2025 (Stockholm, Sweden).

“Imperial Parallels: Iberian and Ottoman/Habsburg Comparisons Feasibility.” Department of Humanities, EUNEIZ University Vitoria-Gasteiz, May 15, 2025 (Basque/Spain).

“Gulf Arab States and Yemen Amid Regional & Global Imperial Domination” For Power & Society in the Arabian Peninsula Seminar, Georgetown University, April 28, 2025 (Washington DC).

“Not Exceptional: Israel’s War on Gaza.” Stockholm University, January 22, 2025 (Sweden).

2024

“A Political Economy of Sanctions and Embargo: Tools of Imperial Governance & Militarized Accumulation in Yemen,” Department of Middle East Studies, Georgetown University, November 11, 2024 (Washington DC).

“Exploring Methods of Reading outside of History: Teaching my book Reinstating the Ottomans,” Autumn PhD School, History Department Sarajevo University, November 1, 2024 (Bosnia Herzegovina).

“Navigating the Watershed of Collapse: How Austro-Hungarian and Russian Imperial Agents Harvested Anti-Ottoman Knowledge and its Consequences on the Balkans/Caucasus,” Workshop: Old Empires in Recovery: Lisbon to Moscow, 1700-1900, CHAM Centro de Humanidades, NOVA University, June 27, 2024 (Lisbon, Portugal).

“National Liberation, World Revolution, Anti-Colonial Networks or Globalization by War: Egypt’s Cold War campaign in Yemen and its Republican Legacy, 1958-1978,” Workshop: Cold War Internationalisms of/in the Decolonized World, Graduate Institute, June 6, 2024 (Geneva, Switzerland).

“Beyond Western Colonialism: Case of Turkey (and China),” Workshop: Beyond Western Colonialism, The Decolonising Initiative, European University Institute, May 27-28, 2024 (Florence, Italy).

Political Economy of a Barrel of Gun: Wars and Sanctions as Tools of Imperial Governance & Militarized Accumulation: The Case of Yemen,” Department of Middle East Studies, Georgetown University, March 25, 2024 (Washington DC).

“Ottoman Migratory Knowledge: From Syria, Egypt to US, Unacknowledged Agents of Empire,” Department of History, University of Oslo, March 8 2024 (Oslo, Norway).

“Beneath the Fold: European Calculations and the Quiet End of the Caliphate, 1908-1924,” Colloque - When the center cannot hold: Modern Statehood, Global Islam, and the End of the Ottoman Caliphate, Koç University, Swedish Research Institute, Université du Bosphore, March 4, 2024 (Istanbul)

“Cultivating Defection: How Ottoman-Arabs Harvested Indigenous Muslim Knowledge in the Islamic World, and its 20th century Consequences,” Transottoman Retro-Perspectives: Eastern European-Near Eastern Shared History and its Global Implications, Leipzig University, 1 March 2024 (Leipzig, Germany).

2023

"Cultivating Ottoman-Arabs: The Consequences of Harvested Indigenous Muslim Knowledge in the Islamic World” Global Polycentricity in Migration Studies, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 4 December 2023 (Singapore).

“Political Economy of Agricultural & Food Policies: Struggles for Land, Self-Sufficiency and Food Sovereignty. The Yemen Case,” Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 29 November 2023 (Washington DC).

“Settling Aftermath Regimes: Percolations of a post- Ottoman/Habsburg/Romanov World, 1800-1917,” Lecture Series, NOVA-FCSH, Instituto de História Contemporánea, 28 Sept. 2023 (Lisbon, Portugal).

“Cultivating Defection: How European Imperial Agents Harvested Indigenous Muslim Allies in the Islamic World, and its 20th century Consequences” LUM-SGNCS Indigenous Pacific Workshop, 20 June 2023 (Singapore Technical University, Singapore).

“Micro-Biographies of an Imperialist: Entangling the Many Narratives of Najeeb Saleeby in the Philippines (1900-1935),” Workshop: Biography as Micro-History of the Middle East, 20 April 2023 (Groningen University, Netherlands).

“Measuring the Marginals in Conflicts and their Resolutions,” Master Seminar, Conflict and Conflict Resolution Methods and Sources (Department of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Groningen) 20 April 2023 (Groningen, Netherlands)

“Cultivating Fraud: How Imperial Agents Used Anti-Ottoman Knowledge and its Consequences on the Balkans,” Master Seminar, Travelogues and their Value as Micro-Histories of the Balkans and Central Europe (Department of Central and Eastern European History, University of Vienna) 17 April 2023 (Vienna, Austria).

“Defining Transition: How to Account for Europe’s Integration as a Concept,” Internal Meeting for Exploratory Project LISBONMOSCOW, Ludovika: University of Public Service, 20 March 2023 (Budapest, Hungary).

“Conflicts of interest in international law scholarship: Addressing an indifference to capitalist imperialism” at Symposium: Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force, School of Public International Law, Utrecht University, 19 January 2023 (Utrecht, The Netherlands).

Isa Blumi researches societies in the throes of social, economic, and political transformation. In the past, he compared how Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Italian, British, Dutch, Spanish, and French imperialist projects in the Islamic world intersected with, and were thus informed by, events within the Ottoman Empire. His latest work covers the late Ottoman period and successor regimes, arguing that events in the Balkans and Middle East are the engines of change in the larger world. In this respect, he explores in a comparative, integrated manner how (post-)Ottoman societies found in, for instance, Albania/Yugoslavia, Turkey, the Gulf, and Yemen fit into what is a global story of transition. This in turn informs the story of the Atlantic and Pacific worlds, especially the emergence of modern European imperialism in the Americas and Asia.

As he expands his work to include more of the 20th century, Blumi explores processes of change induced by Orthodox Christian and Muslim refugees/migrants who settle throughout the world. These diasporas from the (post-)Ottoman world prove instrumental to the kinds of imperialist projects emerging by the 20th century. The dynamic relations migrants establish with both imperial administrators and indigenous populations serves as the primary historical tension under study. His recent publications reveal such complex interactions between Albanians, Slavs, Arabs, Turks, Greeks and, be they Dutch/French/Spanish/Portuguese/American administrations in the South China Sea, or the British and Italian colonial regimes in Eastern Africa.

One of his current research projects investigates how Muslims and Christians of the former Ottoman Empire navigated the processes by which the Caliphate is ultimately eliminated in 1924 under European (Dutch, British, French, and Italian) imperial pressure. Blumi is also exploring how unsettled peoples in the Horn of Africa, Arabia, and Balkans shaped the management of nature along borders separating competing imperial polities (Italian, English, and French) throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. A third project explores how subsequent generations of refugees assimilated into their new host environments in the Americas, especially the industrial cities of Detroit, New Orleans, Veracruz, Buenos Aires, and Boston throughout the 20th century.

Finally, reflecting an interest in the Cold War, Blumi is additionally working on understanding how peasant, urban poor, and laborering class Muslims from throughout the world contributed to the Cold War with special focus on the interactions between the Lusophone World (in the context of the anti-colonial wars in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Timor, and Cabo Verde) and communist parties in Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Turkey, Syria, Yemen, Albania, and Yugoslavia. This work extends to challenging scholarly narratives around the Persian Gulf with a new book project exploring new approaches to the understanding of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the larger world from the late Cold War to Present.

Exploring such interactions through this global perspective helps us question how we understand modern identity and social organization, themes Blumi focuses on in the courses he teaches. In addition to his historical research, Blumi also regularly writes and lectures on contemporary Balkan and Middle Eastern politics (especially Kosovo, Turkey, the Gulf and Yemen) and political Islam.

Reseach Collaboration (Since Joining Stockholm University)

Dr. Blumi is currently collaborating on a number of international, interdisiplinary research projects:

Co-Organizer: "Rethinking the Mediterranean East from the Global South” via the Critical Ecologies Lab in the Mediterranean East (CELME) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) in collaboration with the Department of Economics at SOAS, the research collective Worlds of Liberation.

Advisor: Transimperialistpasts Network (TIP). Instituto de Historia Social Valentin de Foronda, Universidad de Pais Vasco https://www.ehu.eus/en/web/institutovalentindeforonda/transimperialpasts

Co-Organizer: "Cultural Heritage in Exile: Protecting Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Conflict and War Zones" Collaborative Project by Isa Blumi and Colleagues in the Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University.

Co-Organizer: Latin America, Asia, Middle-East, Global Links. Partnership between Departments of Latin American Studies and Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Stockholm University.

Collaborator, Kuma International Center for Visual Arts from Post-Conflict Societies (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) https://kumainternational.org/.

Advisor: INFRAEMPIRE. ERC-Advanced Grant Funded Project. Department of Social Anthropology, Utrecht University, Netherlands. https://www.uu.nl/en/news/erc-advanced-grant-for-research-on-infrastructural-imperialism.

Professor Blumi has also been previously involved in the following completed research projects while a member of Stockholm University's Faculty:

Collaborator, Turkish Studies Network Low Countries. https://www.turkeystudiesnetwork.org/

"The Lausanne Project" (Jointly organized by Departments of Modern History, University of Southampton and Utrecht University) Multi-year project funded by Ginko and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

“Decolonizing Hellas: Imperial Pasts, Contested Presents, Emancipated Futures, 1821-2021” (Jointly organized with Anthropology Department, American University of Beirut, The Decolonizing Initiative, Brown University, and the Social Anthropology Department, University of Thessaly).

"Many Roads in Modernity: The Transformation of South-East Europe and the Ottoman Heritage from 1870 to the Twenty-first Century," (Funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and hosted by the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen).

“Global Environmental Borderlands in the Age of Empire,” Jointly Sponsored by the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University (Taos, New Mexico) and Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA).

Project Coordinator with Professor Dr. Christoph Neumann, “Representing Migration.” Conference organized from project was titled "Legacies of Post-Imperial Migrations from World War I to the Cold War," for the Center for Advanced Studies, LMU-Munich (Germany 2018).

Project Coordinator with Professor Dr. Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu, “Islamophobia in Europe: Past and Present,” funded jointly by the Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies (BALKAR) of Yıldız Technical University and IRCICA, (Turkey, 2017).

Recent Media Contributions as Commentator and Expert Guest:

Radio Student Slovenia (Ljubljana): https://radiostudent.si/politika/offsajd/zapusceni-separatisti

UK Column: https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/sudan-another-forgotten-war

Jamarl Thomas Show (NYC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqN-9rOf5Tk

Deep Dive Perspective (London): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaBREOJtzr8

Adnan Husain Show (Ontario): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWP4GHtGLqU

InsurgenSeas (Beirut): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmH4vPp1f_s

Borderlines (Nigeria): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EWEhBQcGME

Abhijit Chavda (India): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzVar_RWuzA

Recent Publications

Books and Monographs

• Destroying Yemen: What Chaos in Arabia tells us About the World (University of California Press, 2018). https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520296145/destroying-yemen
  
• Yavuz, M. Hakan, and Isa Blumi (eds). War and Nationalism: the Balkan wars, 1912–1913, and their sociopolitical implications. (University of Utah Press, 2013). https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/war-and-nationalism/
• Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939: Migration in a Post-Imperial World. (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/ottoman-refugees-18781939-9781472515384/
• Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State. (Routledge, 2012). https://www.routledge.com/Foundations-of-Modernity-Human-Agency-and-the-Imperial-State/Blumi/p/book/9781138306974
• Reinstating the Ottomans: Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800-1912. (Palgrave-Springer, 2011). https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230119086
• Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism. Vol. 19. (Routledge, 2010). https://www.routledge.com/Chaos-in-Yemen-Societal-Collapse-and-the-New-Authoritarianism/Blumi/p/book/9780415625753
• Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Social and Political History of Albania and Yemen, 1878-1918. Vol. 67. (Isis Press, 2003). (Reprinted in 2010 by Gorgias Press). https://www.gorgiaspress.com/rethinking-the-late-ottoman-empire

Edited Contributions

• Editor of Special Issue: Alternative Accounts for Yemen’s Ruination, Middle East Critique (forthcoming, 2026).
• Editor of Special Issue: The Gulf and the World, Middle East Critique Vol. 34, Issue 2 (2025). https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccri20/34/2#:~:text=The%20US%2DChina%20Strategic%20Competition,Alen%20Shadunts
• Co-editor (with Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu) Special Issue: Islamophobia in Europe, IRCICA Journal vol. 3 issue 6 (February 2018), 208 pages. http://www.balkar.yildiz.edu.tr/sayfa/5/IRCICA-Journal/159.
• Editor and co-author (with Robert Muharremi), The United Nations Mission in Kosovo and the Privatization of Socially Owned Property: A Critical Outline of the Present Privatization Process in Kosovo (Prishtina: Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, 2005). 2 Editions. ISBN 9951140130
• Editor and co-author (with Robert Muharremi), Administration and Governance in Kosovo: Cluster of Competence and the Rehabilitation of War-Torn Societies (Prishtina: Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development, 2005) 2 Editions. ISBN 9951140092.

Select Journal Articles

• "Recognizing the Unmentioned Dynamics of Migrant Labor History," Diplomatic History, Vol. 49, no. 5 (October, 2025) pp. 1-6. https://academic.oup.com/dh/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/dh/dhaf068/8287674?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false
• “Guest Editors’ Introduction: Re-worlding the Gulf: Anomaly as Geo-Political Function,” co-authored with Jaafar Alloul in Special Issue Middle East Critique Vol. 34, Issue 2 (May 2025), 181–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2025.2457271.
• “Gulf Women and Anti-European Imperialism: Gender Discourses in Interwar Iran’s Shi‘i Reformation Movement,” co-authored with Fatemeh Moslehzadeh, Middle East Critique Vol. 34, Issue 2 (May 2025), 219-238. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2025.2453318
• “Mining Racial Capital: How Ottoman-Arab Go-Betweens Navigated American Racist Imperialism in the Philippines,” Third World Quarterly (February, 2025), 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2025.2456834.
• “Settling Aftermath Regimes: Itinerate Cham Albanians in the Post-Ottoman World, 1822–1932”. Archiv Orientální 91 (3), (2024): 467-95. https://doi.org/10.47979/aror.j.91.3.467-495.
• Symposium: Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force, OpinioJuris (February 15, 2023). http://opiniojuris.org/2023/02/15/symposium-on-rewriting-histories-of-the-use-of-force-conflicts-of-interest-in-international-law-scholarship-addressing-an-indifference-to-capitalist-imperialism/.
• "Iraqi Ties to Yemen's Demise: Complicating the 'Arab Cold War' in South Arabia," Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World 16:3 (December 2022), 235-254.
• "Imperial Equivocations: Britain’s Temperamental Mobilization of the Caliphate, 1912-1924." Rivista italiana di storia internazionale 4, no. 1 (2021): 149-173.
• “Speaking Above Yemenis: A Reading Beyond the Tyranny of Experts, Tribes, and Politics in Yemen, ” Global Intellectual History Vol. 6. Issue 6. (November, 2021), 990-1014.
• “An Ottoman Story Until the End: Reading Fan Noli’s Post-Mediterranean Struggle in America, 1906-1922,” Journal of Balkans and Black Sea Studies Vol. 3 Issue 5 (December 2020): 121-144.
• “Balkanlar Kültürel Elitinin Paradoksal Dağılışı: Bir Osmanlı Arnavut Hikayesi,” Kebikeç (Special Issue on Ottoman Newspapers) Vol. 50 (2020): 261-284.
• “The Albanian Question Looms over the Balkans Again" Current History (Special Issue: Europe) Vol. 119 Issue 815 (2020), 95-100.
• "War and Peace in Somalia: National Grievances, Local Conflict and Al-Shabaab," ed. by Michael Keating and Matt Waldman. Northeast African Studies 20, no. 1 (2020): 169-173.
• “Albanian Slide: The Roots to NATO’s Pending Lost Balkan Enterprise.” Insight Turkey (Special Issue: The Balkans at a Crossroads) Spring Vol. 21. No. 2 (2019): 149-170.
• “Introduction: Islamophobia in Europe,” IRCICA Journal, 6/1 (February 2018): 1-28. http://www.balkar.yildiz.edu.tr/sayfa/5/IRCICA-Journal/159 
• “Nothing New: Islamophobia by Default in Postwar Europe,” IRCICA Journal, 6/1 (February 2018): 29-65.

Select Chapters in Edited Volumes

• “Navigating the Challenge of Liberalism since 2020: The Albanian Orthodox Church’s Century,” in Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.) Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine: Nationalism, Traditionalism, and Intolerance. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026). https://link.springer.com/book/9783032138781#overview.
• “Itinerant Ottomans: Refugees and Migrants as the Engine of an Empire’s History,” in Alexis Wick (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Ottoman Empire (Uni of Cambridge Press, 2025), 317-327.
• “Imperial Edges and Those Who Live There: A Reconsideration of the Frontier in Ottoman History,” (co-authored with Güneş Işıksel), in Alexis Wick (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Ottoman Empire (University of Cambridge Press, 2025), 253-265. https://www.cambridge.org/se/universitypress/subjects/history/middle-east-history/cambridge-companion-ottoman-history?format=PB&isbn=9781009087889.
• “The Derailed Christian Mission: Neoliberal Globalization Claims another Victory in Post-Communist Albania,” in Frank Cibulka and Zachary T. Irwin (eds.) Liberals, Conservatives, and Mavericks On Christian Churches of Eastern Europe since 1980 (A Festschrift for Sabrina P. Ramet). (Vienna, Central University Press, June 2024). https://ceupress.com/book/liberals-conservatives-and-mavericks.
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• “La misión liberal de Najeeb Saleeby: un sirio-estadounidense en la construcción del Imperio en el sur de Filipinas, 1900-1923,” in Darina Martykánová and Juan Pan-Montojo (eds.) Misioneros del Capitalismo. Aventureros, hombres de negocios y expertos transnacionales en el siglo XIX (Granada: Editorial Comares, 2023), 183-204. https://www.comares.com/libro/misioneros-del-capitalismo_149829/.
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• “Exceptionally Normal (post)Ottomans: The Paradoxical Dispersal of the Balkans’ Cultural Elite,” in Laura Almagor. Gunvor Simonsen, and Haakon A. Ikonomou (eds.) Global Biographies: Lived History as Method (Manchester University Press, 2022), 124-142.
• "Ottoman Albanians in an Era of Transition: An Engagement with a Fluid Modern World." Narrated Empires: Perceptions of Late Habsburg and Ottoman Multinationalism. (Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2021), 191-212.
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• “Navigating the Challenge of Liberalism: The Albanian Orthodox Church’s Century,” in Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.) Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 197-222.
• “Battles of Nostalgic Proportion: The Transformations of Islam-as-Historical-Force in Western Balkan Reconstitutions of the Past,” in Catharina Raudvere (ed.) Nostalgia, Loss & Creativity in South-East Europe: Political and Cultural Representations of the Past (Palgrave, 2018): 37-71.

Professional Duties: Editorial and Advisory:

Elected member of Czech Academy of Sciences (Praha).

“Appointed Expert,” European Commission Brussels, European Research Council (ERC)

Accreditation Review Board, Leiden University, Middle Eastern Studies Department, BA/MA Programs.

"Appointed Expert," Austrian Science Fund (Wien).

Evaluator for Research Coordination Office, KU Leuven, Belgium.

Evaluator for The American Philosophical Society: Franklin Research Grant (Philadelphia, USA).

Evaluator for The American Academy in Berlin.

Editorial Advisory Board, Book Series: Encounters in the Middle East and Asia, Edinburgh University Press.

International Advisory Board, Middle East Critique, Taylor & Francis. (Xian)

Editorial Board, Journal of Balkans and Black Sea Studies (Munich)

Member of the Scientific Board, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Çanakkale Turkey

Editorial Board, Book Series South-East European History, Peter Lang (London)

Board Member, Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and Associate Editor International Journal of Middle East Studies (2014-2017).

Director of Research, Kosovo Institute of Policy Research and Training, KIPRED, Prishtina, Kosovo (2002-2005).

Advisor, Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Department of Democratization, Prishtina, Kosovo (2002-2003).

Program Chief, OSCE/UNMIK, Radio/Television Prishtina Development Program. Under special appointment issued by OSCE Ambassador to Kosovo, Daan Eveerts (July-November 1999).