Rifat Bali is a graduate of the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) of Paris and an associate member of the Alberto-Benveniste Centre for Sephardic Studies and the Sociocultural History of the Jews (École Pratique des Hautes Études / CNRS / Université Paris/Sorbonne). He is the winner of the Alberto Benveniste Research Award (Paris) for 2009 for his publications on Turkish Jewry and of the Yunus Nadi (?stanbul) 2005 and 2008 awards for research in social sciences.

His latest book, “Model Citiziens of the State The Jews of Turkey During the Multi-Party Period”, was published by the Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in 2012. In his professional life he is the managing director of Libra Books in Istanbul, Turkey. Libra Books is a small academic press specializing in Turkish studies and a service house supplying foreign libraries with their publication needs in the field of Ottoman and Turkish studies.