Selçuk Esenbel is Professor Emeritus at Boğaziçi University’s Department of History and the Asian Studies Center. Born in 1946 in Washington, D.C., she pursued her education in Japanese and East Asian Studies, earning degrees from George Washington University, Georgetown University, and a PhD in Japanese History from Columbia University. She taught at Boğaziçi from 1982-2013, where she chaired the History Department and established programs in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean languages. She also founded Boğaziçi’s Asian Studies Center and the MA in Asian Studies program.