Melis Taner obtained her B.A. from Sabancı University, Department of Social and Political Science in 2006. After her B.A. degree, she studied Medieval History at Central European University (2007). She completed a second M.A. in History at Sabancı University in 2009. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University (History of Art and Architecture). Since the completion of her Ph.D. she has been working as an Assistant Professor at Özyeğin University in the Department of Architecture and Design.

Her main area of research is Islamic art, specifically early modern Ottoman and Safavid painting. Her first book Caught in a Whirlwind: A Cultural History of Ottoman Baghdad as Reflected in its Illustrated Manuscripts was published by Brill in 2020. This book explored art production in the Ottoman province of Baghdad in the late- sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries.

Her new research focuses on Mediterranean-wide networks of epistemic exchange, particularly about medicinal plants. To support her research, she was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship at Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz's 4A_Labs research group that focuses on plants and plant humanities. She is currently working on her second monograph on a group of illustrated botanical manuscripts.