Esin Nizamoglu

Esin Nizamoglu is currently pursuing an M.A. in European and Russian Studies at Yale University. A dual citizen of Turkey and Bulgaria, Esin holds a B.A. in Political Science and Government from Sciences Po Paris, with an exchange year at Vassar College, where she conducted a research project on the ethnic cleansing of the Turkish minority in late-socialist Bulgaria. Esin is fluent in English, French, and Turkish, and conversational in Italian, German, and Bulgarian.

Esin’s research interests span the politics of memory, historiography, and identity in post-socialist Eastern Europe. Her undergraduate research examined how memory accounts can reconstruct the narrative of the 1989 ethnic cleansing of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria in the absence of historiographical consensus. Drawing on survivor interviews, archival research, and critical memory theory, her work positions memory as a means of confronting the legacies of violence and informing policy in international law and transitional justice. Building on this foundation, her research at Yale seeks to develop a fuller historiographical and political analysis of ethnic tension and state violence in Bulgaria across the 1980s.

At Yale, Esin also intends to learn Russian while deepening her understanding of European governance, transatlantic relations, and the foreign policy challenges facing post-socialist states.

Esin remains curious about whether it's better to know a little about everything or too much about one thing, and what exactly a New Haven slice is.

Department: European & Russian Studies