Biography
Timur Saitov specializes in refugee history, the modern Middle East, and Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian history. He earned his PhD in History from Binghamton University in 2025. His dissertation, Russian Exiles in Post-WWI Istanbul: The Emergence of Modern Refugees under the Ottoman Post-War Government and the Allied Occupational Administration, positions the Russian civil war refugees in Istanbul as a unique historical group that triggered the invention of the category of modern, internationalized refugees by newly emerged international organizations, humanitarian institutions, and national governments.
His most recent publications include “The Case of the Evacuees from Russia in Occupied Istanbul as the Foundation of Modern Refugee Regime,” in Occupied Istanbul: Urban Politics, Culture, and Society, 1918–1923, edited by Yaşar Tolga Cora, Daniel-Joseph MacArthur-Seal, and Gizem Tongo (New York–Oxford: Berghahn Books, June 2026); and “Russian Civil War Refugees in Occupied Istanbul,” in Istanbul, 1914–1922: War, Collapse, Occupation, and the History of Resistance, edited by Ohannes Kılıçdağı, 349–367 (Hrant Dink Foundation Publication, December 2025). Currently, he is a processing archivist at the Russian History Museum in Jordanville, NY, where he works with original materials related to Russian imperial and Soviet history, as well as Russian emigration and diaspora.
Other Publications
- “Constructing a Refugee Through Producing a Refugee Space: Russian Migrants in Occupied Istanbul (1919-1922),” International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 10:2, pp. 337–360, 2021.
- “Istanbul – Constantinople – Tsargrad: The First Capital of Russian Emigration,” Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly, Issue 137, pp. 90-101 (Hebrew), 2018.
Research Interests
- Refugees during and after WWI
- Refugees in the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe
- Russian refugees and emigration
- International refugee and humanitarian institutions