Arzu Eylül YALÇINKAYA, Ph.D

After completing her master’s degree with her thesis titled “Mathnawi Conversations of Kenan Rifai” at Istanbul University in 2012, Yalçınkaya pursued another master’s program at Harvard University Extention School of Religious Studies in 2013. As of the foundation of Üsküdar University Institute for Sufi Studies in 2015, she was assigned as a lecturer, which she currently carries out. In the meantime, she received her PhD at Uludağ University in 2020. Yalçınkaya knows Arabic, English and Persian. For the 2022-2023 academic year, she was accepted as a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies and she is the author of “The Role of Sufi Thought as the Bridge between the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey: Attitudes of Sufi Intellectuals during the Transitional Period”. Some of her academic studies can be listed as follows: “Key Concepts in Ahmad al-Rifai’s Understanding of Sufism: Humility, Helplessness, Servility, Fragility, Destitute, Poverty”; “Kenan Rifai, One of the Late Ottoman Sheikhs: His Life, Works and Understanding of Sufism”; “On the Concept of Asceticism in Early Sufi Classics”. She has been participating in both national and international symposiums, and giving open public conferences and seminars in different cultural centers.

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