Nilay Özlü is an architectural historian with a focus on the urban culture of Istanbul, late-Ottoman history, museum studies, and court culture. She submitted her doctoral dissertation From Imperial Palace to Museum: The Topkapi Palace during the Long Nineteenth Century at Boğaziçi University, Department of History. She worked as the project coordinator and historical consultant for the Topkapı Palace Museum restoration projects between 2014-2016. Her co-edited volume The City in the Muslim World was published by Routledge in 2015 (second edition in 2017). She received Samuel H. Kress Foundation Fellowship by the Society of Architectural Historians, the Barakat Trust Award by Oxford University and Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories Scholarship. Her most recent article “Silent Guardians of the Regime: The ‘Lost’ Police Stations of the Topkapi Palace” was awarded the 2019 Early Career Article Prize by Istanbul Research Institute. Özlü is an Assistant Professor at Altınbaş University, teaching architectural design, history, and theory and she is currently the Barakat postdoctoral fellow at the Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford.