Egemen Yılgür is an associate professor in the anthropology department at Yeditepe University, where he has been a faculty member since 2019. He also offers sociology and urban studies lectures in the sociology department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. His research interests are the effects of Ottoman and early republican modernisation on Roma or the other peripatetic / late-peripatetic groups, the political participation of immigrant Romani tobacco workers in the late Ottoman and the early Republican period, and social history of informal settlements in the Ottoman and Turkish cities.

Egemen Yılgür has been conducting research as a Fulbright fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress since October 2023. The research project, titled ‘The Late Ottoman Informal Settlements as a Form of Grassroots Modernization,’ aims to enhance our understanding of unauthorized housing initiatives taken by different segments of Ottoman society that became widespread in the late 19th century. Yılgür views informal housing not as an obstacle to modernization or as a remnant of traditional urban fabric, but as a modern solution to the problems generated by top-down modernization efforts. He has already collected a large amount of material on the topic from various reading rooms at the Library of Congress. The research project will conclude in late March.