The poster presentation at the 2026 American Historical Association Conference focusing on this project, will share some of our research outputs, discuss the progress we made and challenges we faced. The physical and visual flow of the poster will reflect several components of this SHIFA-ANA project, with six major points of interest, situated circularly around the poster, with the overarching project goals centered.
First, the poster will highlight the benefits and advancements in public history through SHIFA-ANA’s monthly public lectures, coordinated with the History of Infectious Disease in the Islamicate World Working Group (HIDIW), under the sponsorship of the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM). The working group was established in early 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with an overarching goal of contributing to a newly emerging configuration in the field of infectious disease history with a special interest in challenging prevailing Eurocentric narratives, with presenters from among a diverse group of speakers including both junior researchers and established scholars from North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
Second, the poster will showcase a publicly accessible digital bibliography on Death and Disease in the Islamic Mediterranean, currently in progress. The bibliography consists of hundreds of scholarly resources regarding the history of healing, death, and disease in the Mediterranean region and seeks to advance public access to sources within the academic field.
Third, the Necrogeographies of Istanbul (NECRO-IST) aims to map out surviving and lost graveyards of Istanbul, identify the individuals buried therein, research their stories, and generate publicly accessible information about them.
Fourth, our Black Death Digital Archive (BDDA) is a collection of Ottoman archival records on plague and other epidemic diseases, offering a body of knowledge to learn more about disease experiences in Anatolia from the sixteenth century to the twentieth.
Fifth, our Archeohistory of Disease helps to identify traces of diseases detected in the skeletal remains or consider possibilities for facial reconstruction of skeletons through our ongoing collaboration with the İZNİK Roman Theater Excavation and Restoration Team archeologists, Vedat Onar’s Osteology Lab, and McMaster Ancient DNA Centre.
Finally, in our effort to advance public knowledge, SHIFA-ANA has utilized all the former practices within the project through workshops, creative sessions and lectures and developed a summer school in the Republic of Türkiye at Şirince, Izmir at Arkhe Campus entitled “Şifalandıran Anadolu, Şifalanan Tarih” (‘The Healer Anatolia, Healing History).