In this episode, Paolo speaks to Asel Doolotkeldieva, a research fellow at the University of Potsdam in Germany, whose work explores the intersection of political conflict and extractivism in Kyrgyzstan, and more recently, across Central Asia.

Asel has a couple of decades of experience researching the political ecology of large-scale extraction and how it affects domestic societies and local communities.

Asel expanded her focus to encompass the geopolitical encroachment of foreign powers in Central Asia's mining projects and whether the role of Russia, China, or the EU led to "variegated sovereignty" perceptions among the local population.

At the crux of domestic and global politics, corporate power, and global capital, some of Asel's work can be accessed online in open access. This episodes focuses mostly on the article Mining for Norms: International Extractivism, Chinese Business, and the Indeterminacy of Compliance in Kyrgyzstan, but also touches on her more recent research endeavors in Kazakhstan.

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