Academic Bio
Rao Mohsin Ali Noor is currently a second-year PhD student focusing on early modern Ottoman cultural history very broadly, and the history of sensory perception and olfactory culture in the Ottoman Empire more specifically. He is interested in teasing out not only the material culture of perfumery guilds in the Ottoman empire, but also cultural attitudes to various sensory stimuli, including sight, smell, sound and touch. Approaching the senses as not merely biological but also cultural phenomena, he seeks to tackle important questions around the sensory construction of gender, race, class and religious life in the Ottoman lands in pre-modernity through a study of travelogues, medical treatises, encyclopedias and biographical literature.
He completed his bachelor's degree in history with a minor concentration in political science from the Lahore University of Management Sciences in 2014, and went on to pursue an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago in 2016.