Merve Emre

Merve Emre is a writer, literary scholar, and professor of English and American literature at Princeton University. She is the author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Science and Technology. Her other books include What Would Lynne Tillman Do? and The Bachelors.

Merve Emre was born in Istanbul in 1982 and moved to Canada as a young child. She grew up in the suburbs of Calgary, Alberta and completed a degree in literature at the University of Calgary. She went on to pursue a doctoral degree in English and American literature at Emory University and then held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto.

Emre has written extensively on the history of personality testing, exploring the subtle discrepancies between scientists and laypeople's understandings of the theory and its implementation. In her book The Personality Brokers, she investigates the phenomenon of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an influential psychological test that is used in countless hiring decisions and has become popular in the self-help industry. Emre argues that the test's deficiencies largely result from its reliance on pseudoscience and unsound methodology, and she provides a comprehensive historical overview of its invention and development in the early twentieth century.

Emre's approach to the study of psychology and history of personality testing is both rigorous and accessible. In her book What Would Lynne Tillman Do?, she explores the life and work of the iconic American author and critic Lynne Tillman in order to understand her unique perspective on life and the world. The book excavates Tillman's views on genres, femininity, and the self in order to illuminate larger questions about how we construct and make sense of our individual and collective identities.

In her most recent book, The Bachelors, Emre covers the history of singlehood through the life of Yugoslavian engineer Mihailo Crnobrnja. Through Crnobrnja's story, she examines the myths and stereotypes of singlehood to uncover larger questions of cultural and personal identity. The book is an effort to extend the boundaries of singlehood beyond the confines of a conventional narrative and to create a nuanced portrait of both Crnobrnja's life and the experiences of singletons more generally.

Emre's writing and scholarly research has earned her numerous honors and awards. She is the recipient of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, the R.O.M.E. Prize from the Goethe Institute, and the Marginalien Prize from the Academy of Science in Munich. Her work has been widely published in prestigious academic journals, newspapers and magazines, and she has appeared on National Public Radio, the BBC, and other major media outlets.

Merve Emre has established herself as a prominent voice in the history of personality testing and singlehood, contributing to the conversation with rigorously researched books and insightful, accessible writing. Her work continues to challenge the status quo and provide readers with a fresh perspective on issues of identity and individuality.