Professor Ali Coşkun Tunçer

Coşkun Tunçer is an economic historian with a focus on the history of financial markets and the Middle East. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2011, after completing his BA, MSc and MPhil degrees in Turkey and Greece. Before joining UCL in 2013, he taught and conducted research at the London School of Economics and the European University Institute.

Coşkun is currently working on a funded project investigating the urban wealth and religious segregation in the Ottoman Empire from 1600-1914. His other ongoing projects are on the stock exchange development in the Middle East and the history of domestic debt in emerging markets.

PhD supervision

Coşkun is interested in receiving PhD proposals from prospective students on any aspect of economic and financial history. He particularly welcomes projects informed by social science methods.  

Currently supervising: 

• Dogukan Atmaca 'The Displacement of the Jewish Communities and Islamization of Ottoman Constantinople (1650-1685)’ (UCL, History)
• Theodosis Pipis, ‘An Escape from Eurocentrism and Hellenism: Cypriot History in an Arab Key, 1923-1974’ (UCL Hebrew & Jewish Studies, with Seth Anziska) 

Completed: 

• Johannes Hartmann, 'The German Notgeld, 1914-1924' (UCL, 2022).
• Yasin Arslantas, 'Confiscation by the ruler: A study of the Ottoman practise of Müsadere, 1700s-1839' (LSE, 2017)
• Tehreem Husain, 'Railway mergers in the early twentieth century: An exploratory study' (UCL, 2023).

Grants/projects

Current projects: 

Coşkun is currently involved in two collaborative funded projects: 

• Urban wealth inequality in the Ottoman Empire, 1600-1914. This project with Dr Gürer Karagedikli (METU, Ankara) is supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (2021-24). The project also received initial financial support from UCL Global Engagement Fund in 2020: Housing and urban inequality in the Ottoman Empire, c.1500-1914. 
• Law and Finance in the Long Run: Australia and Argentina. This is a collaborative project with Rui Esteves (IHEID, Geneva) and Carsten Gerner-Beuerle (UCL, London) is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2021-22).

Recently completed:

• Democracy, autocracy and sovereign debt: How polity shaped government-creditor relations in the first age of globalisation. This research project with Leo Weller (FGV, São Paulo) is supported by the British Academy Newton Fund (2016-2021). 

Selected Publications

• Tunçer, C., & Weller, L. (2022). Democracy, Autocracy, and Sovereign Debt: How Polity Influenced Country Risk on the Peripheries of the Global Economy, 1870-1913. Explorations in Economic History, 101449. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101449
• Karagedikli, G. and C. Tuncer. 2020. House prices in the Ottoman Empire: evidence from eighteenth-century Edirne. Economic History Review, 74 (1), 6-33. 
• Esteves, R. P. and C. Tuncer. 2016. Feeling the blues: moral hazard and debt dilution in Eurobonds before 1914. Journal of International Money and Finance, 65, 46-68.  
• Tuncer, C. 2015. Sovereign Debt and International Financial Control: The Middle East and the Balkans, 1870-1914. Palgrave Macmillan. 

For a full list of publications, see Coskun's Iris profile.

Teaching

• The City of London in the Age of Global Capital 1870-1914 (UG special subject) 
• History that Counts: Methods and Cases in Quantitative History (UG advanced seminar)
• Topics in Economic History (MA seminar)
• Environment, State and Economy (MA core course)