TÜBA Honorary Member Prof. Dr. İsenbike Togan was presented with the Silver Medal from UTA…
TÜBA Honorary Member Prof. Dr. İsenbike Togan was presented with the UTA Silver Medal by the International Turkish Academy (UTA) for his important contributions to the development of Turkish science and education and his important research on the history of the people of related countries on October 8.
Who is Prof. Dr. İsenbike Togan?
After completing secondary school education at the İstanbul German High School, İsenbike Togan graduated from the Istanbul University Literature Faculty History Department (1964) and continued to study General Turkish History, the Persian Language and Literature and Turkish Arts History; In 1964-66 she studied Chinese at the National Taiwan University (Taiwan) with a Nationalist China Government scholarship in order to learn about Turkish history from Chinese sources. In 1967-68, while teaching Chinese at the Istanbul University Literature Faculty she started working on her doctorate at the Ankara Language-History Geography Faculty but a short time later went to the Harvard University in the U.S. with a Fulbright scholarship to complete her doctorate. In 1968-73 she completed her doctorate on researching Central Asian history from Turkish Mongolian and Chinese sources and by working on a system similar to the Ottoman manorial system implemented in China during the Mongolian revolution she graduated from the East Asia Languages and Civilizations department with her thesis titled "The Chapter on Annual Grants in the Yüan shih" (1973).
Prof. Dr. Togan, who returned to Turkey and began teaching Turkish Culture History and Mongolian at the Hacettepe University Turkish Language and Literature department in 1974-78, also did research at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies in 1975-76. From 1978 to 1984 she taught on the staff of the Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in the Political Science and Public Administration Department and during this time (1980-82) was awarded an MEA (Middle Eastern Award) scholarship to conduct research on the nomads in Sudan. When METU’s history department was established in 1984 she moved to this department and started giving Turkish history and medieval age classes. Later in the U.S. she taught from 1985 to 87 at the Harvard University Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, she conducted studies at the Harvard Middle Eastern Center and taught in 1987-89 at Wellesley and Tufts Universities respectively and in 1989 she became a fellow of the Washington University in St. Louis Center for the Study of Islamic Societies and Civilizations with a Rockefeller scholarship. Until 1992 she taught Central Asian, Near East and Chinese history at the Washington University History Department. In 1990 she became a member of the UNESCO International Scientific Committee for the drafting of a History of Civilizations of Central Asia and in the same year conducted studies in the scope of the UNESCO Integral Study of the Silk Roads project in the People’s Republic of China in 1990 and in 1991 during the Soviet Union period in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Crimea. In she returned to Turkey and began working as an associate professor of the Medieval Era at METU in the summer of 1992 and became a professor in 1995. Prof. İsenbike Togan became a TÜBA Honorary member in 2007.