Merih Erol is a historian of the late Ottoman Empire whose work explores nationalism, ethnic and religious identities, and the cultural politics of music. She earned her PhD in history from Boğaziçi University in 2009 and has held research fellowships in Berlin, Princeton, and Harvard. She is the author of Greek Orthodox Music in Ottoman Istanbul (Indiana University Press, 2015), which examines how music shaped communal identity among Ottoman Greeks. She is currently researching American missionary activity and Protestant conversions in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire. At Özyeğin University, she teaches courses on world civilizations, Ottoman/Turkish history, and Balkan history.