The DFG Project “The Market’s Underbelly: Monopoly, Smuggling, and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire” led by Dr. Toygun Altintas at the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut at the FU Berlin investigates the role of illicit activities and state surveillance in the making of modern markets in the late Ottoman Empire with a focus on tobacco. As part of this investigation, Toygun Altintas is creating a digital database for provincial and empire-wide harvest and export data as well as smuggling routes and activity recorded in the archives of the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman Tobacco Company. A workshop on the relationship between smuggling and market formation from a global perspective is also planned for the fall of 2027. We are looking for a student assistant that will help with the associated data management and administrative tasks.

Job description:
The task for the student position will be assistance in the expansion and management of the digital database of the data that Toygun Altintas collected during his archival research on the late Ottoman tobacco industry and smuggling activity. The work will also include assistance in the correspondence related to the preparation and organization of an academic workshop tentatively scheduled to take place in the fall of 2027.

Main Tasks:
Assistance with data management and visualization
Administrative assistance with workshop preparation and organization

Minor Tasks:
Transcription of hand-written archival material (in French)

Desirable:
Interest and coursework/preliminary research experience in modern Middle Eastern history
Experience with data management in the humanities
Very good English (C1/C2) and French language skills (B2/C1)

For further information, please contact Dr. Toygun Altintas (t.altintas@fu-berlin.de).