Merve received her BA degree in Freie University Berlin, majoring in history and minoring in anthropology. During her BA, she focused on the discourses of the ‘Other’ and history of perceptions as well as war and peace with regards to the Ottomans-Germany relations in the early modern period. Her current focus has shifted towards early modern Eastern Europe as a contact zone between the Ottomans, Germans and specifically the Polish. Her interests are influenced by the post-colonial discourses she studied in anthropology and the spatial turn, specifically the conceptualization of borders, as well as the day-to-day experiences in the frontiers or the contact zones. Her other interests include German colonial history with a focus on the colonial discourses and debates in Germany, religious history and migration studies. Merve hopes that the multidisciplinary approach of the Global History program will extend the possibilities of research.