Alexandra Yerolympos of Thessaloniki's Aristotle University will be a speaker at the seminar series Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean at the Ottoman Bank Museum, Istanbul, on Friday, November 18th. The title of her presentation has not yet been announced. Yerolympos is the author of the book Urban Transformations in the Balkans 1820-1920. Aspects of Balkan Town Planning and the Remaking of Thessaloniki as well as several articles on Balkans urban history in the 19th and 20th century.

The conference Zwischen Nostalgie, Amnesie und Allergie: Die Erinnerung an den Kommunismus in Südosteuropa (Between Nostalgia, Amnesia, and Allergy: The Memory of Communism in Southeast Europe) will be held in Berlin on December 1-3, 2005 (in German). Several presentations will deal with approaches to monuments from the Socialist period. A preliminary program is available online here.

The Aegean Exchange Program administered by the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) will grant 3 short-term fellowships of up to $2500 for Turkish doctoral students and senior scholars to conduct research in Greece, under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA). In other news, the Turkish Higher Education Council has announced to award scholarships for foreign researchers for conducting research, graduate and postgraduate studies in the humanities and social sciences in Turkey. Subjects supported include "Christians in the Ottoman Empire", "Armenian Diaspora", and more. One precondition is the ability to work in the Ottoman archives. The original CfA is available here (.doc).