Jessica DiCarlo is an Assistant Professor in Geography, Environment, and Asian Studies at the University of Utah. She is also a 2023-24 Wilson China Fellow, and a 2023-25 Public Intellectual Program (PIP) Fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Prior, she was the Chevalier Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Transportation and Development in China at the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. A critical human geographer, Dr. DiCarlo contributes to debates on China’s role in shaping development, resource politics, and global capitalism. Her research is informed by several years in China's NGO and education sectors since 2008, and her interest in borderlands motivated research and other work in Laos, Nepal, India, and Tibet. Through her commitment to long-term fieldwork, she seeks to bridge the gap between on-the-ground case studies and global dynamics. She has conducted research on infrastructure, development, land and resource politics, disasters, critical minerals, economic zones, and US-China competition. It has been published in high-ranking journals, including Geoforum, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Ecology and Society, Geopolitics, Ambio, Area, and multiple books. Her co-edited book, The Rise of the Infrastructure State (Bristol University Press 2022), contributes timely perspectives on infrastructural competition as it unfolds across scales and places.

Dr. DiCarlo earned a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Colorado Boulder and a master’s in Development Studies from the University of California Berkeley. Her academic journey has been enriched by several positions, including a Global China Fellowship at Boston University's Global Development Policy Center (2019), a Research Fellowship at the University of Bern's Centre for Development and Environment in Laos (2018-20), a USAID Research and Innovations Fellowship in India (2015), and a Princeton-in-Asia Fellowship at the Dalian University of Technology in China (2009-10). She collaborated on the Swiss-funded NSF project ‘Roadwork: An Anthropology of Infrastructure at China's Borderlands’ and contributed her expertise as a non-resident researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In addition, Dr. DiCarlo co-founded the Second Cold War Observatory, a platform for in-depth analysis of global power dynamics, and co-hosts The Roundtable podcast. She is also a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR). Her commitment to bridging academic and public knowledge and advancing more nuanced understandings of China is further demonstrated by her role on the editorial board of The People’s Map of Global China & Global China Pulse journal. She is also an avid outdoors person, whether backpacking in the Himalayas, canyoneering in Utah, ski touring with my huskies, or cycling (and eating) my way around Taiwan. 

For more, see www.jessicadicarlo.org.

I am interested in working with students and faculty on research that develops novel insights on topics related to issues at the environment-society nexus, global China, infrastructure, land and resource politics, and more.