I am a political anthropologist working at the intersection of political violence, political economy and material culture. My work has fundamentally circled around the challenge of engaging ethnographically with the Armenian genocide, as an event that lies at the foundation of the Turkish nation-state but whose reality and reverberations have always been transnational. In my PHD dissertation, I approached this challenge from the perspective of the Armenian community in Germany and Turkey, focusing on their subjection to and negotiation of particular regimes of citizenship and politics of history as manifested both nationally and transnationally (such as through the dissemination of a particular ‘expertise’ in matters of confronting the past from Germany to Turkey, and through the dissemination of a denialist programme in Germany). Since 2012 my focus has shifted from Berlin and Istanbul and the Armenian communities there to a provincial town in the far East of Turkey, also known or referred to as Western Armenia and Northern Kurdistan. Researching the case of an urban regeneration scheme in a formerly Armenian historical quarter as well as the widespread practice of hunting for ‘Armenian’ treasures, my analytical interest has moved towards a concern with questions of matter, violence and value.

My project at CARMAH grows out of this research and addresses how the politics of urban regeneration and the practices of treasure hunting target ‘non-recognised’ or ‘denied’ minority cultural heritage as objects of speculative economies, raising questions as to relation between violence, economy and temporality. This project therefore combines political anthropology with political economy and heritage to address how historically contingent forms of economic valuation and accumulation constitute not only an integral part of political violence, but implicate particular objects and materials in ways that have temporally destabilising effects. It speaks to broader contemporary concerns with economic and biopolitical governance in an era of austerity and debt, while drawing attention to the historical depths these developments are immersed in. Moving beyond current ‘crisis-talk’, my project combines ethnography and historical analysis to enquire into the place of death and debt in relation to both the necromantic foundation of the nation-state and contemporary neoliberal governance. The project also resonates with current debates on the provenance and return of art and antique objects. I enquire into how profit is sought from minority heritage in a context of genocide denial, where material remains are not recognised and commodified as ‘cultural heritage’ and where trade in looted objects occurs without much objection.