Canan Bolel

Canan Bolel is an Assistant Professor in Jewish Cultures, Literature, and Languages of the Eastern Mediterranean at the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of Washington. She specializes in the social and cultural histories of Sephardic communities during the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic.

Her research focuses on marginalized Sephardic Jews in late Ottoman Izmir, and she actively engages in literary translation from Ladino, Ottoman Turkish, and Turkish into English. Notably, she collaborates with Dr. Laurent Mignon on translating Beki L. Bahar's works and is translating Sevim Burak's Osmanc Bankası.

Educated at the London School of Economics and Political Science (MSc in Sociology) and the University of Washington (PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Studies), her work bridges historical scholarship and literary preservation.