Onur İnal (Project Leader) is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Near Eastern Studies of the University of Vienna. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2015 with a dissertation on the urban and environmental history of Ottoman Izmir. He is a board member and the secretary general of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH), where he also served as the regional representative for Turkey from 2017 to 2025. He founded the Network for the Study of Environmental History of Turkey (NEHT) in 2017 and has since managed it. His research focuses on the urban and environmental histories of the late Ottoman Empire and early republican Turkey. His monograph, Gateway to the Mediterranean: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Izmir, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. His academic work has appeared in edited collections and peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of World History, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Ottoman Studies, Journal of Urban History, Environmental History, and Environment and History.

Deniz Armağan Akto (Researcher) is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History of Bilkent University in Ankara. He received his M.A. from the Middle East Technical University with a thesis titled “Ottoman Fortresses and Garrisons in the Hungarian and the Eastern Frontiers (1578-1664).” His research focuses on the military and socio-economic history of the early modern Ottoman Empire. He is a member of the Early Modern Ottoman Studies (EMOS) group.

Zsófia Csilla Nádai (GIS specialist) graduated from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest with a degree in Archaeology. Both her BA and MA theses focused on analyzing Ottoman and Early Modern Period pottery from an excavation in the Watertown of Buda. After working as an archaeologist for several years, she earned a second MA at Central European University, where her research examined the historical and archaeological records of Kisvárda Castle. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at CEU, studying the environmental history of the Upper-Tisza region in Hungary. Her broader research interests include material culture and built heritage from the medieval and early modern periods.