Jessica DiCarlo

Jessica DiCarlo (PhD Geography, 2021): Spirited Collaboration, Epistemic Generosity

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:07:11 +0000

Jessica DiCarlo (PhD Geography, 2021): Spirited Collaboration, Epistemic Generosity Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 10:07

The Geography Department at the University of Colorado Boulder cultivates an intellectual community that lasts well beyond graduation. For Jessica DiCarlo, now an assistant professor at the University of Utah, CU geography continues to shape her work through ongoing collaborations with alumni who share commitments to critical thinking and engaged scholarship. Across her research and teaching, these relationships exemplify how CU trains geographers as thinkers attuned to power, possibility, and a spirit of epistemic generosity (Chadwick 2024).

In Autumn 2025, Jessica delivered the keynote lecture for the National Council for Geographic Education and the American Association of Geographers, Great Plains/Rocky Mountain region division. In it, she reflected on the reciprocal relationship between research and teaching, and advocated for cultivating curiosity, critical thinking, and care as central pedagogical commitments. In the audience was fellow CU alum Rebecca Theobald (PhD Geography, 2007), who is editing The Oxford Handbook of Geography for Educators. Their encounter sparked a shared commitment to student-centered pedagogy. Jessica is now adapting her keynote into the opening chapter of the human geography section of Dr. Theobald’s book. The chapter situates human geography as a tool for understanding global transformations and challenges through lived experience, kinesthetic methods, and a pedagogical practice of curiosity, attention, and ethical engagement. Aspects of this work build on Jessica’s CU-based doctoral research in “The World from a Bicycle: Cycling as Kinesthetic Methodology” (Progress in Human Geography), which theorizeskinesthetic methodologies.

CU geography is especially evident in Jessica’s global China research. With longtime collaborator and CU alum Meredith DeBoom (PhD Geography, 2018), she wrote an anchor article and Dialogues in Human Geography. “Six Paths of Global China: A Genealogy of a Contested Geographical Imaginary” traces how “Global China” has been constructed, mobilized, and debated across various scholarly and political contexts. The journal’s anchor-response format also generated intellectual exchange within the CU community itself, including a formal response (read: a spirited provocation!) from faculty member and mentor Tim Oakes (this and other responses can be found here). Meredith and Jessica continue to scheme on questions of resource politics, “green” transitions, and Global China.

Jessica also put her head together with recent CU graduate and railway aficionado David Fernando Bachrach (PhD Geography, 2026) to compare their research on railway corridors in Laos and Indonesia. In an Antipode article, they theorize the process of “corridorization” and how large-scale railway projects transform space into governable and investable corridors, producing new forms of enclosure and uneven development. Their work reflects a shared intellectual lineage grounded in CU’s training in political ecology and political geography, as well as their longstanding conversations that began during David’s very first year of his PhD.

Finally, as her research has expanded to focus on critical minerals and energy transitions, so have collaborations in these areas. In a commentary in Nature Energy co-authored with CU alums Aaron Malone (PhD Geography, 2019) and Nicole Smith (PhD Anthropology, 2012), they advance the concept of just-shoring, arguing that emerging strategies such as onshoring, friendshoring, and reshoring, while aimed at securing supply chains, risk reproducing environmental harms and social inequalities associated with fossil fuel extraction. Instead, the authors call for frameworks that center community rights, accountability, and co-governance across the entire mineral life cycle (a longer article on the just-shoring frameworks is under review). By reframing supply chain security through questions of justice rather than geography, they ask who benefits, who bears the risks, and how much extraction is necessary.

From CU to the present, an ethos of connection and collaboration has threaded together Jessica’s research and teaching. She endeavors to grow similar spirits of rigor, intellectual openness, and curiosity among her graduate and undergraduate students within her Political Ecology Lab at the University of Utah. Together, they engage questions that span agricultural labor, Global China, mining in Utah, and green infrastructure in Asia with an eye toward uneven power relations and how they are lived. Jessica’s commitments to students and research are reflected in her 2026 receipt of the Margaret FitzSimmons Early Career Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology group of the American Association of Geographers. Drawing inspiration from FitzSimmons’ legacy as a devoted mentor and inspiring educator, Jessica approaches teaching as central to scholarly life and hopes to bring these ideas and much of what her students teach her to life in Dr. Theobald’s book.

For more or to connect, visit jessicadicarlo.phd.

References

Bennett, Mia, Jessica DiCarlo, and Sarah Elwood. 2025. The world from a bicycle: Cycling as kinesthetic methodology. Progress in Human Geography.

Chadwick, Rachelle. 2024. The question of feminist critique. Feminist Theory, 25(3), 376-395.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Raphael Deberdt, Nicole Smith, Scott Odell, Aaron Malone, Lydia Jennings. A just energy transition requires just-shoring critical materials. Nature Energy.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Meredith DeBoom. 2025. Six paths of Global China: A genealogy of a contested geographical imaginary. Dialogues in Human Geography.

DiCarlo, Jessica and David Fernando Bachrach. 2025. The corridor as commodity: Enclosure, legibility, and uneven development in Southeast Asian railway projects. Antipode.

Oakes, Tim. (2025). The lingering exceptionalism of global China. Dialogues in Human Geography.

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Jessica DiCarlo, PhD 2021

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 20:24:28 +0000

Jessica DiCarlo, PhD 2021 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/25/2022 - 14:24

Jessica DiCarlo

Chevalier Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Transportation and Development in China
Institute for Asian Research, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs
University of British Columbia

After moving from the California coast to the Rocky Mountains to the karsts of northern Laos, I’m thrilled to return to the Pacific and be in the coastal ranges of Canada. I recently joined the University of British Columbia as the Chevalier Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Transportation and Development in China (2021-2023) at the Institute of Asian Research in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. The fellowship supports an emerging China scholar to pursue a dual academic and policy program of research related to Chinese development and investment in infrastructure across Asia. I received my PhD from CU Geography in December 2021 under the supervision of Emily Yeh as well as Tim Oakes, Yaffa Truelove, Michael Dwyer, and Carla Jones.

My journey to CU and fascination with China began during my first summer in Beijing in 2008. From there, I lived in Dalian, China as a Princeton-in-Asia Fellow (2009-10) and subsequently worked in Shanghai (2010) and for a Tibetan NGO in Shangri-la, Yunnan (2012-13). Many of my reflections on these early years in China involve infrastructure. I remember the excitement of China’s first high-speed rail rolling into Beijing, and the engineering feat of a train to Lhasa, high on the Tibetan plateau. I vividly recall wandering the humongous ports in Dalian and wondering what was so special about a new economic zone. Years later, as I began my PhD, I knew I wanted to think about China’s global expansion in development within and beyond China’s borders. CU geography was clearly an ideal place to do so. I had learned about the department and Emily’s work during my Masters at the University of California Berkeley (2014-16). After presenting her book, Taming Tibet, in a political ecology seminar, Emily kindly made time to discuss it with me on the phone (a rarity with academic schedules!). I quickly decided that I would apply to work with her at CU.

My dissertation – Grounding Global China in Northern Laos: The Making of the Infrastructure Frontier – developed an ethnography of global China centered on one infrastructural corridor and three projects that have become emblematic of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): the Laos–China Railway, Laos–China Economic Corridor, and Boten Special Economic Zone. Drawing on seventeen months of fieldwork, I suggest that the infrastructure frontier is made through the discursive repetition of the need to unblock Laos; undervaluation of land; spectacle and performance to attract capital; more-than-economic logics of Chinese capital; and both Lao and Chinese state-support. I am committed to long-term ethnographic fieldwork and spent time cycling and motorcycling the corridor as part of my methodology (see image).

I am thrilled to be able to expand on my doctoral work and launch an ambitious research agenda as I begin to apply for tenure track professorships. As a postdoc, I am developing articles and a book project from my dissertation. In my first semester, I’ve focused on revising articles on the temporality of infrastructure and project finance as a spatial fix, as well as a book chapter on Laos’ infrastructural history. I’ll soon turn to a book proposal. In addition to publications, at UBC I am crafting a policy-oriented research agenda by holding two workshops during my two-year tenure. The first will include a book launch for my co-edited volume (below) and panel with some of the authors to share grounded perspectives on geopolitical competition in infrastructure. My second workshop in 2023 aims to take stock of the BRI ten years after it was first announced, from both social science and policy perspectives. Finally, I’m very excited to teach three courses for the Master of Public Policy and Global Affairs program: Resource Governance and the Environment; Grounding Global China; and Asia Policy and Practice.

Beyond UBC, I serve on the editorial board at The People’s Map of Global China and Global China Pulse, and view them as exciting ways to engage a wide network of researchers and civil society actors interested in grounded perspectives on China’s overseas investment. I act as a collaborator on the Swiss National Science Foundation project Roadwork: An Anthropology of Infrastructure at China’s Inner Asian Borders at the University of Zurich. I’m also consulting on the environmental implications of the BRI. In 2019, I was a Global China Research Fellow at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, which I highly recommend to other China-oriented PhD students at CU.

Finally, I look forward to the release of my co-edited book in August 2022: The Rise of the Infrastructure State, which includes a chapter from fellow CU Geography alum Meredith DeBoom. From this project, I co-founded The Observatory to foster more critical conversations on geopolitical competition.

I am endlessly grateful for all that CU Geography has taught me and for the incredible people that have illuminated my life. I feel very fortunate for the opportunity to continue to engage in the conversations and scholarship that I’ve cultivated over my years in the department, and hope that I can pass on the same generosity of spirit and intellect. In my freetime, I continue to explore the mountains and oceans with my huskies, Nikita and Huckleberry.

For more information see: www.jessicadicarlo.org.

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Jessica DiCarlo Receives 2021 Summer Graduate School Fellowship

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 22:16:40 +0000

Jessica DiCarlo Receives 2021 Summer Graduate School Fellowship Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/02/2021 - 16:16

Jessica DiCarlo was selected as a recipient of the 2021 Summer Graduate School Fellowship. The Geography department nominated her for this Fellowship to support her dissertation writing. Her project, Steel Silk Roads and the Making of the Infrastructure Frontier is an ethnographic study on the Laos-China Railroad that examines China's growing global presence through infrastructure.

Jessica is a PhD candidate in Geography. She received her Master's degree from the University of California Berkeley in 2016. Her interests span critical development studies, political ecology, and infrastructure studies. She is advised by Dr. Emily Yeh, Professor and Chair of the Geography Department.

With the generous support of donors and the ̽��Ƶ community, the Graduate School offers awards, grants, and fellowships that support the outstanding research, creative work, and teaching of our graduate students.

Congratulations Jessica!

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Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award for PhD Students

Anonymous — Wed, 10 May 2017 19:25:43 +0000

Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award for PhD Students Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/10/2017 - 13:25 Jessica DiCarlo , Zhaxi Duojie , Gretchen Lang , Kyle Rodman

The Department of Geography is pleased to announce that Jessica DiCarlo, Zhaxi Duojie, Gretchen Lang and Kyle Rodman have received the Jennifer Dinaburg Memorial Research Award for PhD students for Spring 2017. This award assists Doctoral students with funding for summer research projects.

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