Katja Mielke

Senior Researcher
Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies

E-mail: katja.mielke@bicc.de
Phone: +49 (0)228 911 96 – 23

Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies gGmbH (BICC)
Pfarrer-Byns-Straße 1
53121 Bonn

De:link//Re:link Project:

China’s New Silk Road Initiative in North Rhine-Westphalia and Pakistan

Katja Mielke

Project Description

The BICC team (Nadia Ali, Conrad Schetter, Katja Mielke) investigates the influence of Chinese presence in North Rhine-Westphalia and Pakistan in the context of China’s New Silk Road Initiative. Our research consists of a PhD-dissertation (Nadia Ali [hyperlink]) focusing on the aspirations, hopes and subsequent actions of different actors in and outside of Gilgit-Baltistan in relation to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Arising contestations and conflict dynamics around CPEC’s large infrastructure projects are assumed to shape local ordering dynamics. Complementary, we explore socio-political and economic processes related to Chinese engagement in North Rhine-Westphalia, departing from the inland port in Duisburg as one of the end points of the New Silk Road in Europe.

Research Interests

  • // ‘Southern‘ epistemologies, knowledge production and ‚New‘ future-oriented area studies
  • // Urban heritage, violence and peacebuilding
  • // Contestation about (potential) BRI-manifestations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Germany
  • // Political sociology of social order/ing and state-society relations

Vita

Katja studied East European and Central Asian Studies as well as Political Science at Free University and Humboldt University of Berlin. She obtained her PhD in Development Research with a dissertation on social order and local governance in Northeast Afghanistan from the Center for Development Research of Bonn University. In her post-doc project, she investigated dynamics of social mobilization, inequality and forced immobility in peri-urban areas of Karachi, Lahore and Kabul in the framework of the BMBF-funded research network ‘Crossroads Asia: Conflict, Migration, Development’. At BICC, her research is positioned at the intersection of peace and conflict-, development- and migration studies.

Selected Publications

  • // Mielke, Katja 2022: Calculated informality in governing (non)return. An evolutionary governance perspective. Geopolitics DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2022.2052854
  • // Mielke, Katja; Cermeño, Helena 2021: Mitigating pro-poor housing failures. Access theory and the politics of urban governance. In: Politics and Governance, 9.2. DOI: 10.17645/pag.v9i3.4113
  • // Mielke, Katja; Hornidge, Anna-Katharina (eds.) 2017: Area Studies at the Crossroads. Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • // Mielke, Katja; Wilde, Andreas 2017: The Role of Area Studies in Theory Production. A Differentiation of Mid-Range Concepts and the Example of Social Order. In: Mielke, Katja;
  • // Hornidge, Anna-Katharina (eds.) 2016: Area Studies at the Crossroads. Knowledge Production after the Mobility Turn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 159-176.
  • // Mielke, Katja 2016: Tracing Change. On the Positionality of Traditionally Mobile Groups in Kabul’s Camps. In: Internationales Asienforum/ International Quarterly for Asian Studies, 47.3/4, 245-271.
  • // Cermeño, Helena; Mielke, Katja 2016: Cityscapes of Lahore: Reimagining the Urban. In: Vandal, Pervaiz (ed.): Peoples History of Pakistan. Lahore: THAAP Journal, 110-139.
  • // Mielke, Katja 2015: Not in the Master plan: Dimensions of exclusion in Kabul. In: Sökefeld, Martin (ed.): Spaces of Conflict. Bielefeld: transcript, 137-164.
  • // Mielke, Katja 2014: Protests in Search of a Movement. In: Tanqeed, Issue 7 (Fall 2014), 52-58.
  • // Mielke, Katja 2014: Das neue Kabul – Besitzkämpfe und Interessen im Urbanisierungsprozess. In: inamo (Informationsprojekt Naher und Mittlerer Osten), 20.78, 21-23.