Isa Blumi

Isa Blumi (born 1969, in Teplice, Czechoslovakia ) is a historian.

He is a senior lecturer and associate professor of Turkish Studies at Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies in Sweden.

During the Kosovo conflict (1998–1999), Blumi was a member of the provisional Kosovo government.

After the war, he worked as a consultant for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the Organization for Security and Operation in Europe (OSCE).

Blumi completed an MA in Political Theory and Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research in New York, United States.

Studying in the History, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies departments, Blumi graduated with a Ph.D. in 2005 from New York University.

His dissertation focused on the complex interactions that Ottoman authorities and inhabitants of Ottoman Albania and Yemen had with each other, with Blumi visiting regional and national archives around the world for his research while he was a Fulbright-Hayes fellow being based in Istanbul.

Blumi also had a SSRC-IDRF (Social Science Research Council – International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship) fellowship for his Ph.D. research.

Blumi became an assistant professor of Middle Eastern and Balkan history at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA.

During that time he was also a senior research fellow in the Centre for Area Studies at Leipzig University, Germany and a visiting professor of history at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates where his research focused on regional migration and its impact on host societies.

Blumi has written more than two dozen articles.

They cover topics and focus on Ottoman rule in Albania and Yemen, migration patterns of Muslims in the Balkans to Western and Central Europe, south-eastern European history and current affairs, post First World War social history in Kosovo and Albania, the Kosovo crisis, and analysing issues relating to state centralisation and identity.

His research interests include Balkan history, Political Islam, the Middle East/Persian Gulf/Red Sea regions and Muslim migration.

Blumi has favoured a multi-sited comparative and interdisciplinary approach toward his research that encompasses social history, post-colonial theory and analysis of state institutions as they evolved over time.

His research has also entailed a transregional approach examining sociopolitical, cultural and economic exchanges, links and fragmentation in relation to collapsing political systems and the Ottoman Empire, Habsburg Empire and their transnational impacts on the Balkans and Balkan diasporas around the globe.

His other areas of research interest have included modern forms of Islam as practiced in the Balkans, Middle East, Eastern Africa and South-East Asia after the Second World War and nineteenth century Asian Muslim Emirates dealing with expanding European commercial interests within the South China Sea.