Gülru Necipoğlu was born in Istanbul in 1956. After graduating from Robert College, Istanbul, in 1975, she earned her B.A. at Wesleyan University, Connecticut (1975-79) in European art and architecture. She received her Ph.D. at Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture (1979-86), where she started teaching as Assistant Professor in 1987, and has been the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture since 1993. Prof. Dr. Necipoğlu is the editor of the Harvard Aga Khan Program’s journal, published by Brill: Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World (Brill, vols. 10-37) and Supplements to Muqarnas (vols. 9-14).

Her articles include comparative studies on the arts and architecture of Islamicate empires (Ottoman, Timurid-Turkmen, Safavid Iran, and Mughal India); cross-cultural artistic exchanges with Byzantium and Renaissance Europe; and architectural practice in premodern Islamic lands (15th-17th centuries) with a focus on plans and drawings, the aesthetics of abstract ornament, and geometric design. Her critical interests encompass methodological and historiographical issues in modern constructions of the field of Islamic art and Orientalism. Her books include: Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapı Palace (MIT, 1991; Turkish translation 2007, reprint 2014); The Topkapı Scroll–Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Getty, 1995); The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (Reaktion, 2005 and reprint 2011; Turkish translation, Bilgi, 2013, reprint 2017).

Her Topkapı Scroll was the winner of the Albert Hourani and Spiro Kostoff book awards. The Age of Sinan was awarded the “Fuat Köprülü Book Prize” by the Turkish Studies Association. Academies and societies to which she has been elected as a permanent member are: The British Academy, The American Philosophical Society, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Centro Internazionale di Studi di Archittettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza, Italy.