Merlijn Olnon

Merlijn Olnon is both BA and MA in Turkish languages and cultures (cum laude, Leiden University), with minors in diplomatic history and international relations, an advanced master's degree in Asian, African, and Amerindian studies (cum laude, Research School CNWS, University Leiden) and a PhD in the history of relations between Europa and the Ottoman Near and Middle East (Leiden University). He taught History of the Middle East (Utrecht University) and conducted long-term archival research in Amsterdam, Cambridge, The Hague, London, and Istanbul. He has published internationally on early modern Dutch, English, French and Ottoman history, with an emphasis on diplomacy and international relations, inter- and crosscultural relations, law and state formation, and maritime, urban and social history. In addition to his academic career, he has worked for many years as an academic manager for a large book business and is the founding editor and publisher of The Dutch Review of Books.

As an acquiring editor at AUP, he is particularly interested in proposals in the fields of Middle and Near Eastern Studies, Mediterranean Studies, Southeast European Studies, Central Asian Studies, and more generally in world history, early modern and modern history, particularly where they intersect with Anthropology, Politics, Sociology, Economics and Law. Some subjects that have his special attention: diplomatic history and international relations, bureaucracies, frontiers, state formation and modernization; politics, the urban environment, the production and distribution of space and power, world systems and technologies; (world) literature, literary and cultural criticism.