Mustafa Akgün

Biography

Mustafa Akgün is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on early modern France and the Ottoman Empire, with particular interest in the transformation of monarchical authority. He studies how early modern monarchies drew upon inherited religious and political traditions as they sought to consolidate their rule, and how the structural and institutional transformations accompanying this process reshaped the terms of political legitimacy. His interests extend to confessionalization, state formation, and the construction of orthodoxy and heresy within changing relations between religion and political authority.

Before coming to Notre Dame, Akgün completed an MA in Political Science at Central European University. His thesis, An Absolutist Future from a Sacralized Past: The Alliance between the Most Christian King and the Shadow of God on Earth, examined the Franco-Ottoman alliance under François I and Süleyman I. It asked how two sacral monarchies could sustain a cross-confessional alliance without abandoning the religious and political claims that legitimized their rule. Akgun received his BA in Political Science from Bilkent University.