Mr. Aşkın is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Brown University. He holds two MAs in History from Brown University (2019) and Boğaziçi University (2017); and BAs in Economics and History from Boğaziçi University (2015). His dissertation brings together histories of capital(ism) and extractivism in the Ottoman empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. By excavating a biography and social mobility of an imperial scribe (kâtib) from the Ottoman state archives, he documents and analyzes three circuits of capital (mining, merchants, industrial) which were orbiting around the Ottoman Imperial Mint (Darphane-i ‘Âmire). He adopts “capital” as a primary category of analysis and thereby develops an expanded definition of “extractivism” to account for both militarized dimensions of capital accumulation and market-dependency of military reforms. During his fellowship tenure at ANAMED, Mr. Aşkın works in various archives and visits historical sites to map out capital’s paper trails and tail. He also drafts dissertation chapters on mines, opium, and sheep.