Mitch Fraas is a senior curator for special collections at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. He holds doctoral and master's degrees in history from Duke University and earned his bachelor's degree at Boston College. His doctoral dissertation examined the legal culture of British India in the 17th and 18th centuries. He is currently a principal investigator on a multi-institutional project to digitize over 500 manuscripts from the Islamicate world held in Philadelphia and New York libraries.  In addition to the history of law and imperialism, he is especially interested in the history of printing and the book and in the digital humanities, as well as the future of scholarly publishing and copyright.