Personal Statement
Dr Sizen Yiacoup is a specialist in the cultural history and literature of medieval and early modern Spain. Her research focuses on cross-cultural conflict and exchange between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in pre-modern Iberia, with particular attention to how literary texts reflect and shape interfaith relations and imperial ideologies. She has published extensively on the representation of Muslims in Castilian frontier ballads, examining how these texts evoke the hybrid cultural landscape forged through centuries of contact, conflict, and negotiation between Christian Castile and Muslim Al-Andalus. She has also written on war and religious violence in the Judeo-Spanish ballad tradition.

Dr Yiacoup is also a specialist in Habsburg-Ottoman relations and early modern imperial rivalries, with a particular interest in how literary and diplomatic texts narrate encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman world. She is currently preparing a scholarly English translation of the sixteenth-century Spanish dialogue Viaje de Turquía for publication with Liverpool University Press.

Research Overview
Dr Şizen Yiacoup’s research focuses on medieval and early modern Spanish literature and cultural history, with particular expertise in frontier ballads, Hispano-Muslim and Sephardi traditions, and representations of religious and cultural difference. Her work explores how literary texts across genres construct and contest ideas of identity, memory, and power in the context of interfaith and intercultural contact. She has published widely on topics including the Castilian romancero, Judeo-Spanish literature, and the figure of the Turk in early modern Spanish writing, and is currently completing a critical edition and annotated English translation of Viaje de Turquía, a sixteenth-century dialogue exploring Ottoman society through the eyes of a Spanish captive.