Dr David Leupold is a scholar of memory wars and (post-)imperial shatter zones. He is the winner of the CESS 2021 book award and holds a doctoral degree awarded from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Chair of “Comparative Democracy Studies and the Political Systems of Eastern Europe” (“summa cum laude”, 2020). He further holds an M.A. degree in German-Turkish Social Sciences from METU Ankara and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as well as a B.A. degree in Middle Eastern Studies (focus: Ottoman and Iranian Studies) from Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg. Alongside his native German, he is fluent in Armenian, English, Farsi, Russian, Spanish and Turkish, has reading proficiency in Azerbaijani, Czech, Portuguese and Tajik as well as training in Ottoman paleography.
Prior to joining REVENANT he was a postdoctoral fellow in the University of Michigan department of sociology, a research fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, the principal investigator of his own DFG-funded research project (2021-2025) and, most recently, a visiting fellow at YCIE and resource scholar for the Monterey Symposium. Currently, he is pursuing his qualification for full professorship (habilitation candidate) at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Department of Asian and African Studies. He has been teaching on a wide range of themes including nationalism & imperiality, modernity theory, inter-ethnic cohabitation & conflict and the politics of memory & affect at leading universities in Czechia, Germany, Hungary and the United States of America.
He is the author of two monographs – Embattled Dreamlands. The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory (2020, with a foreword by Dr Ronald Suny) and Death and Life of Southern Soviet Cities. Urban Futures and their Afterlives (2026) -, several peer-reviewed journal articles (ILWCH, Cambridge University Press; Iran & Caucasus, Brill; Europe-Asia, Francis & Taylor) as well as the co-editor of Mobile Histories, Activated Memories. Mnemonic Infrastructures and Congested Souths (forthcoming 2026 in the series “Transdisciplinary Souths” with Dr Nikro). His research has been translated to multiple languages including Armenian, Croatian, Kyrgyz, Russian and Ukrainian.
During his work at the University of Rijeka, Leupold explores perceptions of Central Asia and the Caucasus in Ottoman travelogues (seyahatnâme) and their discursive afterlives in Türkiye’s present-day relationship with the region(s). Marrying historical sociology and memory politics with late-Ottoman historiography and the history of Ottoman-Persian-Tsarist imperial shatter zones, he wants to understand the intricate interplay of multiple overlaying discursive prisms – civilizing mission, pan-Islamic unity, and Turkish urheimat – that had informed Ottoman travelers’ gaze upon the waning “Empire’s East”.