Irmak Şensöz

Irmak Şensöz ’23 is an International History major in the School of Foreign Service with minors in Persian and Turkish. During her time at Georgetown, she focused on the modern history of the Middle East, with an interest in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and Iran. Studying Persian enabled her to interact with the Persianate world’s vast cultural heritage, engage with primary source materials, and better understand social and political dynamics across the region. Persian also served as an important foundation for her to learn Ottoman Turkish, one of the critical administrative languages in Middle Eastern history. Irmak served as a teaching and program assistant with the Persian Studies Program, which encouraged her interest in working with students as a career. After graduating from Georgetown, she will begin her PhD at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies. During her time at Princeton, Irmak plans to continue using her Persian-language skills to study and research transnational connections in the modern Middle East.