Rate My Professor Nikolay Antov

Nikolay Antov is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. His scholarly work centers on Ottoman history, Ottoman Balkans, early modern Ottoman history, Ottoman studies, and early modern history. Antov investigates the dynamics of Ottoman expansion into the Balkans, focusing on frontier zones, settlement patterns, demographic and ethno-religious transformations, and the formation of Muslim communities during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. He holds affiliate faculty positions in Asian Studies, International and Global Studies, and the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies, and previously served as Director of the Religious Studies Program in Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

Antov's major publication is the monograph The Ottoman “Wild West”: The Balkan Frontier in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which examines the development of a significant Muslim settler society in the Deliorman-Gerlovo region of northeastern Bulgaria. His peer-reviewed articles include "Demographic and Ethno-Religious Change in 15th- and 16th-Century Ottoman Dobrudja (NE Balkans) and the Related Impact of Migrations" in Radovi-Zavod za hrvatsku povijest (vol. 51, no. 1, 2019); "Emergence and Historical Development of Muslim Communities in the Ottoman Balkans: Historical and Historiographical Remarks" in Beyond Mosque, Church, and State: Alternative Narratives of the Nation in the Balkans (CEU Press, 2016); and "The Ottoman State and Semi-Nomadic Groups Along the Ottoman Danubian Serhad (Frontier Zone) in the Late 15th and the First Half of the 16th Centuries: Challenges and Policies." He co-edited the special issue "Between Europe and the Middle East: Migrations and Their Consequences in Southeast Europe and Anatolia in Transimperial and Intercultural Context" (Radovi-Zavod za hrvatsku povijest, vol. 51, no. 1, 2019). Antov has received the Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship (2005) for his project on the formation of Muslim communities in the Ottoman Balkans, as well as National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, including one administered by the American Research Institute in Turkey (RA-50108-12) and a Summer Institute on empires and interactions across the early modern world.