University Scholar Boğaç Ergene, Ph.D. will be offering a lecture titled: "Gifts as Bribes According to Islamic and Ottoman Law: Early Modern Insights into Modern Problems" on Thursday, February 19, 2026, 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. in Memorial Lounge.

Dr. Boğaç Ergene, History Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, has been with UVM since 2001. He has an international reputation in Ottoman and Islamic legal history. Dr. Ergene’s research covers a range of topics from corruption in the Ottoman Empire, Arab and Turkish responses to Nazism and the Holocaust, the economics of justice in Sharia courts, judicial practices in the Islamic world, and legal practice and dispute resolution in provincial societies within the Ottoman Empire. He is the author, co-author, and editor of seven books, as well producing special journal issues and some three-dozen peer-reviewed articles in major history, law, and economic journals. A sought-after speaker and panelist nationally and internationally, Dr. Ergene has served as the Aga Khan Distinguished Professor in Islamic Humanities at Brown University, Visiting Fellow in the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law, and Visiting Professor at his alma mater, Middle East Technical University in Turkey. At UVM, Dr. Ergene’s research and teaching were recognized by the College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Lecture Award. As a public intellectual, he has sustained the community’s understanding of global developments and fostered robust critical engagement on the Middle East and the Islamic world.