Omur Harmansah

Ömür Harmansah is Director of the School of Art & Art History and Associate Professor of Art History in the Art History Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He specializes in the art, architecture and archaeology of the ancient Near East, with emphasis on Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia. His research focuses on cities, architectural and urban space, critical studies of place and landscape, image-making practices in the urban and rural environments, cultural engagements with the mineral world (especially caves, springs, rivers), social memory, bodily performance, and the political ecology of local places. Since 2010, Harmansah directed Yalburt Yaylasi Archaeological Landscape Research Project, a diachronic regional survey project addressing questions of place and landscape in Konya Province of west-central Turkey. Born and raised in Turkey, Harmansah studied architecture and architectural history at the Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey), and received his PhD from University of Pennsylvania in the History of Art (2005). Before UIC, he previously taught at Reed College (Portland, OR) and Brown University (Providence, RI).