Boykov, Grigor

Understanding how power and governance work remains one of the central challenges of modern societies. Historical experience shows that political systems rarely function through centralized authority alone. More often they depend on negotiation, cooperation, and competition among a wide range of actors. Focusing on the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, my research explores how political power was organized, negotiated, and exercised within a highly complex imperial society that gave rise to several modern nation-states. By combining traditional archival scholarship with digital and spatial approaches, I aim to highlight the importance of local elites in shaping imperial institutions and systems of governance, thereby contributing to broader debates about political authority, regional identities, and the ways in which diverse societies are integrated into larger political frameworks. Further information can be found at – www.ottomancore.org

• Ottoman governance and imperial administration
• State formation and governance in empires
• Provincial elites, regional power structures, and social networks
• Historical geography and spatial history
• Urban history, settlement networks, and demographic change
• Religious, economic, and social institutions in the Ottoman world
• Digital history, GIS, and spatial humanities
• Historical data infrastructures and computational approaches to the past

• 2001 BA in Balkan History, University of Sofia “St. Kliment Ohridski", Bulgaria
• 2001–2004 MA in Ottoman History, Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye
• 2004–2013 PhD in Ottoman History, Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye
• 2012–2014 Research Fellow, Netherlands Institute in Turkey, Istanbul, Türkiye
• 2014–2019 Researcher, Center for Regional Studies and Analyses, University of Sofia “St. Kliment Ohridski", Bulgaria
• 2015–2016 Visiting Professor, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
• 2019 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow (Horizon 2020), Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye
• 2019–2022 Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
• 2022–2026 Postdoc Assistant, Department of East European History, University of Vienna, Austria
• since 2023 Key Researcher, Cluster of Excellence EurAsian Transformations, University of Vienna, Austria
• since October 2025 Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Grant OttomanCORE: A Spatial Exploration of the Emergence of Ottoman Governance Practices, University of Vienna, Austria
• since June 2026 Tenure-track professorship of History of the Ottoman Balkans, Department of East European History, University of Vienna