KOH Choon Hwee
KOH Choon Hwee
Assistant Professor
Email: chkoh@history.ucla.edu
Office: 5349 Bunche Hall
Personal WebsiteBiography
KOH Choon Hwee (surname: KOH; given name: Choon Hwee) is assistant professor of Ottoman history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Her first book, The Sublime Post: How the Ottoman Imperial Post Became a Public Service (Yale University Press, 2024) used the Ottoman relay postal system to examine Ottoman state formation and the empire’s changing social order.
Her work has won various prizes, including the Jack Goody Article Prize 2023 (for “The Mystery of the Missing Horses”), the Berkshire Conference Article Prize 2022 (Honorable Mention for “The Ottoman Postmaster”), and the Malcolm Kerr Dissertation Prize (Social Sciences) by the Middle East Studies Assocation (MESA) in 2020. Before doing her PhD, Koh studied at the American University of Beirut, National University of Singapore, Delhi University, and the University of Arizona.
At UCLA, she is a member of the Ottoman Music Ensemble where she plays the goblet drum (darbouka). Together with history department colleagues, she helps to run the History Brown Bag Seminar Series (reach out if you are in the area and want to workshop a paper!)
She was born and raised in Singapore. Read her retweets @OttomanChoon and her reposts on bluesky @superoldgranny .
Publications
Book
- 2024 The Sublime Post: How the Ottoman Imperial Post Became a Public Service (Yale University Press)
Articles
- 2023 “Meticulous Sleuthing” A conversation with Andrew Shryock of CSSH (Comparative Studies in Society and History)
- 2023 “An Ottoman Liquidity Crunch: Immediate and Deferred Payments at Post Stations (menzilhane), 1713-1763” Turcica 54:355-375
- 2023 “Two more Firmans on the Reorganisation of the Ottoman Postal System (1101/1690 and 1209/1794): (Documents from the Amasya and Damascus Kadi Sicils)” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 76/1:149-164
- 2022 “The Mystery of the Missing Horses: How to Uncover an Ottoman Shadow Economy” Comparative Studies in Society and History 64
- 2021 “The Ottoman Postmaster: Contractors, Communication and Early Modern State Formation” Past & Present 251/1: 113-152.
Awards & Grants
Awards & Fellowships & Grants
- Jack Goody Article Award (2023) for “The Mystery of the Missing Horses” CSSH
- Society of Fellows, University of Michigan (unable to accept)
- Hans Gatzke Prize for Best Dissertation in a field of European history (Yale History department)
- Malcolm Kerr Dissertation Prize (Social Sciences) by the Middle East Studies Assocation (MESA)
- Social Sciences Research Council Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship (SSRC IDRF)
- American Research Institute in Turkey (North American Friends of John Freely Fellowship)
- Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) Residential Fellowship
