Dr. Alessandro Rippa

Academic Career

since 2015
Postdoc ERC Starting Grant Project "Remoteness & Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World"

2014
Visiting Fellow, Competence Network Crossroads Asia, Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich.

2011-2015
Ph.D. Student at University of Aberdeen, Department of Anthropology. Thesis: "Across the Khunjerab Pass: A Rhizomatic Ethnography Along the Karakoram Highway, between Xinjiang (China) and Pakistan"

2012-2015
Editor at The South Asianist

2011-2012
M.Res in Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen.

2007-2010
MA in Religious Studies/Religions of China, University of Padova and Cà Foscari University of Venice.

Awards and Grants

2014 Crossroads Asia Research Fellowship (4 months).

2011 Research Project Award under "Religion and Politics in the Contemporary World", The College of Arts and Social Sciences Graduate School, University of Aberdeen (36 months).

Talks

Dec 2014
"The Rhizomatic State: An Ethnographic Approach to the China-Pakistan Border", presented at the *4th Conference of the Asian Borderlands Research Network: Activated border - Re-openings, Ruptures and Relationships*, 8-10 December 2014, Hong Kong.

June 2014
"Fragments of the state: a rhizomatic ethnography of the Karakoram Highway between China and Pakistan", presented at the *Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth Decennial Conference*, 19-22 June 2014, Edinburgh.

March 2014
"Anthropology of Roads, Ethnography of the State(s): A Study of the Karakoram Highway between Xinjiang (China) and Pakistan", presented at the workshop *Transregional Crossroads of Social Interaction: The Shifting Meaning of Regional Belonging in South and Central Asia*, 21 March 2014, Berlin.

February 2013
"Subjectivity, Diaspora and the State: Traders and Goods on the Karakoram Highway", presented at the workshop *Roads, Culture and History: Inter-disciplinary Crossroads*, 2 February 2013, London.

June 2012
"Trade, Diaspora and the State on the Karakoram Highway: The Case of the Uyghurs of Pakistan", Toyo Bunko (The Oriental Library), Tokyo, 23 June 2012.

Relevant Publications

• “Re-Writing Mythology in Xinjiang: The Case of the Queen Mother of the West, King Mu, and the Kunlun “ in The China Journal, No. 71 (January 2014), pp. 43-64.
• “Kashgar on the Move”, The Diplomat, October 14, 2013
• “From Uyghurs to Kashgari”, The Diplomat, December 20, 2013
• “Pechino e la comunità uigura del Pakistan”, OrizzonteCina, Febbraio 2014

List of publications (pdf, 320 KB)