Meltem Yaşdağ

Biography

Meltem is an Art and Architectural Historian, Culture and Tourism Expert for the Turkish General Directorate for Cultural Heritage and Museums. She deals with issues concerning temporary and continuous museum exhibitions, new techniques for object displays and the connection between cultural heritage sites and museums.

She is currently working on new research about regional museums and their locations and has completed 33 expropriations for one of the biggest excavations in the Antique City of Stratonikeia in Muğla-Türkiye. Her first book The Architectural History of Population Exchange: Sürmeli was published in 2023. The book concerns historical houses which were constructed by immigrants from Greece to Turkey after Laussane Negotations.

Since 2018 Meltem has been preparing for associate professorship exams in the area of museum and cultural heritage studies. After completed her PhD, she continued to engage with an academic career through writing new publications and holding seminars about museum exhibition, oral history work and museology, cultural heritage sites and museums etc. studies. Both private and government museums in Turkey are accountable to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and in accordance with the Ministry of Education, museum efforts are focused on the role of museums in education. Within this context Meltem aims to make museums more accessible and useful for the children and local people, who live in the area of protected heritage sites. She also works on the concept of living social museums through her seminars and training programmes.

Meltem is also interested in museum architecture associated with museum collections.

At the British Museum
During her time on the International Training Programme in 2011, Meltem was based in the Greece and Rome Department and her partner placement was spent at Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives.

In 2011 participants were asked to develop a proposal for a small temporary exhibition using an object from the British Museum’s collections. Meltem’s exhibition project proposal was entitled Persephone: The daughter of Knidus.

Legacy Projects
In November 2018 Meltem participated in the ITP MA Conference programme in Belfast. With fellows from Egypt, Lesotho and Kenya, Meltem attended a programme structured around National Museums Northern Ireland and the three-day MA Conference on Dissent: inspiring hope, embracing change.

In 2022 Meltem was awarded an ITP Research Grant for her project A Suitcase of Museum: A research on the effectiveness of Aigaleo Athens and İzmir Immigration and Exchange Memorial House in expressing the 1923 Turkish-Greek Population Exchange to the public.

Continued Dialogue
Since the 2011 ITP summer programme, Meltem has collaborated with ITP team for the blog and also with 2011 ITP fellows from Palestine and India for professional support. For her academic and Ministry projects about museology, she continues her communication with Bristol Museums, People’s History Museum and Manchester Museums and uses visual and written material from these museums, which were taken during the 2011 ITP summer programme.

ITP Newsletter Publications
ITP Newsletter Issue 1 (2013), Bulletin Board
ITP Newsletter Issue 3 (2016), Collections in focus: Gods of the underworld in Yazılıkaya
ITP Newsletter Issue 3 (2016), Reasons for celebration: 30 years of Hattusha on UNESCO’s World Heritage List
ITP Newsletter Issue 9 (2022) Is it ok to continue: recycling applications in Turkish museums