thesis in 1967, she studied Teaching English as a Second Language at Indiana University in Bloomington, obtaining an MA for Teachers in 1970.

In 1962-63, she arrived at a turning point in her life when she became a student of Ömer Lütfi Barkan, one of the founding fathers of modern Ottoman historiography and a member of the editorial board of Annales ESC.

After reading volumes of this journal at Barkan’s recommendation, and Fernand Braudel’s La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (Paris, 1949) at a later stage, she felt that this was the type of historiography with which she could identify.

This undertaking has often involved reading Ottoman documents ‘against the grain’ in order to tease out the actions and aspirations of the common people from texts, which for the most part, reflect the aims and interests of the sultans and their officials.

However, it bears remembering that to denizens of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, large sections of this world continue to remain hidden.