DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. Forum: A Decade of the Belt and Road Initiative. Global China Pulse, 2(1): 117-146.

Seth Schindler and Jessica DiCarlo, editors. 2022. The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2021. Grounding Global China in Northern Laos: The Making of the Infrastructure Frontier. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Colorado Boulder.

DiCarlo, Jessica and David Fernando Bachrach. 2025. The corridor as commodity: Enclosure, legibility, and uneven development in Southeast Asian railway projects. Antipode. DOI:10.1111/anti.70014

Alami, Ilias, Jessica DiCarlo, Steve Rolf, Seth Schindler. 2025. The new frontline: The US-China battle for control of global networks. State of Power 2025: The Geopolitics of Capitalism. The Transnational Institute.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2025. Behind the Spectacle of the Belt and Road Initiative: Corridor Perspectives, In/visibility, and a Politics of Sight. In Seeing China’s Belt and Road, edited by Rachel Silvey and Edward Schatz. Oxford University Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2024. Speed, Suspension, and Stasis: Life in the Shadow of Infrastructure. In Infrastructural Times: Temporality and the Making of Global Urban Worlds, edited by Jean-Paul Addie, Michael Glass, and Jen Nelles. Bristol University Press.

Debert, Raphael and Jessica DiCarlo. 2024. Pericentricity on the Congolese Copperbelt: How the DRC Shapes Chinese Cobalt Supply Chains and the Low-Carbon Transition. Globalizations.

Debert, Raphael and Jessica DiCarlo, Hyeyoon Park. 2024. Standardizing “green” extractivism: Chinese & Western environmental, social, and governance instruments in the critical mineral sector. Extractive Industries and Society, 19: 101516.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. The BRI, Grounded. Global China Pulse, 2(1): 143-146.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Kearrin Sims. 2023. Corridors of connectivity and the infrastructural land rush in Laos. The Routledge Handbook for Global Land and Resource Grabbing.

Schindler, Seth, Ilias Alami, Jessica DiCarlo, Nicholas Jepson, Steve Rolf, Mustafa Kemal Bayırbağ, Louis Cyuzuzo, Meredith DeBoom, Alireza F. Farahani, Imogen T. Liu, Hannah McNicola, Julie T. Miao, Philip Nock, Gilead Teri, Maximiliano Facundo Vila Seoane, Kevin Ward, Tim Zajontz, and Yawei Zhao. 2023. The Second Cold War: US-China Competition for Centrality in Infrastructure, Digital, Production, and Finance Networks. Geopolitics.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2022. Eventuality and Rhythms of Life in a City Yet-to-Come. Global China Pulse, 1(1): 145-159.

Schindler, Seth & Jessica DiCarlo. 2022. Towards a critical geopolitics of China-US rivalry: Pericentricity, regional conflicts, and transnational connections. Area, 00, 1–8. Available from: https://doi. org/10.1111/area.12812.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2022. Boten: from Dawn till Dusk. Global China Pulse, 1(1): 141-144.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Micah Ingalls. 2022. Multipolar infrastructures: Mosaic geopolitics and state restructuring in Laos. In The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

Schindler, Seth and Jessica DiCarlo. 2022. Twenty-first-century Third Worldism? In The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Seth Schindler. 2022. Introduction: Geopolitics, infrastructure, and the emergent geographies of US-China competition. In The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US-China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide. Bristol University Press.

Schindler, Seth, Jessica DiCarlo and Dinesh Paudel. 2021. The new Cold War and the rise of the 21st-century infrastructure state. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 00: 1-16.

Suhardiman, Diana, Jessica DiCarlo, Oulavanh Keovilignavong, Jonathan Rigg, and Alan Nicol. 2021. (Re)constructing state power through the Laos-China Railway project. Geoforum, 124(2): 79-88.

Song Zhouying and Jessica DiCarlo. 2021. Socio-environmental implications of the Laos-China Railway. Case Study for the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research. In Understanding the Belt and Road Initiative: Case Study Perspectives, edited by Liu Weidong. Beijing: The Commercial Press.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2020. Development as Palimpsest: Infrastructures Revived in Boten’s Architecture. Roadsides, 004: 15-23.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2020. Mind the Gap: Grounding Development Finance and Safeguards through Land Compensation on the Laos-China Belt and Road Corridor. Global China Initiative Working Paper 013. Boston University, Global Development Policy Center.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Katie Epstein, Robin Marsh & Inger Måren. 2018. Post-disaster agricultural transitions in Nepal. Ambio, 1–12.

Epstein, Katie, Jessica DiCarlo, Robin Marsh, Bikash Adhikari, Dinesh Paudel, Isha Ray & Inger Måren. 2018. Recovery and adaptation after the 2015 Nepal earthquakes: A smallholder household perspective. Ecology and Society, 23(1).

Epstein, Katie, Jessica DiCarlo, Robin Marsh, Isha Ray & Inger Måren. 2017. Coping Strategies of Smallholder Farming Communities after the 2015 Nepal Earthquake: Insights into Post-Disaster Resilience and Social–Ecological Change. Case Studies in the Environment.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Sri Gopakumar, Suneeta Krishnan & Preet K. Dhillan. 2016. Adoption of information and communication technologies for early detection of breast and cervical cancers in low- and middle-income countries. The Journal of Global Oncology and the Annals of Global Health. 

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. Review of June Fourth: The Tiananmen Protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989 by Jeremy Brown, 2021. Eurasian Geography and Economics.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2023. Review of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia by David Lampton, Selina Ho, and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, 2020. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Annah Lake Zhu. 2022. Endangered Species Conservation and the Rise of Global China: A Conversation with Annah Lake Zhu. Global China Pulse, vol. 2.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2020. Review of Resigned Activism: Living with Pollution in Rural China by Anna Lora-Wainwright, 2017. Environment and Society, 11. 

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2020. Review of High-speed rail and China’s new economic geography, edited by Zhenhua Chen and Kingsley E. Haynes. The Pennsylvania Geographer.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2015. Review of Blindspot: How neoliberalism infiltrated global health, by Salmaan Keshavjee. UC Berkeley MDP Blog.

Deberdt, Raphael and Jessica DiCarlo. 2024. DRC is the world’s largest producer of cobalt – how control by local elites can shape the global battery industry. The Conversation.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2024. Bringing a Politics of Sight to the Belt and Road Initiative: In/visibility, Infrastructure, Global China. Transformations: Belt and Road in Global Perspective. Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto.

Oakes, Tim, Jessica Clendenning, Jessica DiCarlo, Matthew S. Erie, Max Hirsh, Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi, Hasan H. Karrar, Verena La Mela, Juliet Lu, Till Mostowlansky, Galen Murton, Huiying Ng, Roger Norum, Nadine Plachta, Björn Reichhardt, Alessandro Rippa, Jasnea Sarma, Emilia Sulek, Dorothy Tang, Zarina Urmanbetova and Thomas White. 2022. China’s global development model: Looking beyond the Belt and Road Initiative. Fribourg, Munich, and Boulder.

Joniak-Lüthi, Agnieszka, Alessandro Rippa, Jessica Clendenning, Jessica DiCarlo, Matthew S. Erie, Max Hirsh, Hasan H. Karrar, Verena La Mela, Juliet Lu, Till Mostowlansky, Galen Murton, Huiying Ng, Roger Norum, Tim Oakes, Nadine Plachta, Björn Reichhardt, Jasnea Sarma, Emilia Sulek, Dorothy Tang, Zarina Urmanbetova and Thomas White. 2022. Demystifying the Belt and Road Initiative. Fribourg, Munich and Boulder.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Timothy Oakes. 2022. From China Model to Global China (ChinaMade Brief #14). ChinaMade: Asian Infrastructures and the ‘China Model’ of Development.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Courtney Wittekind. 2022. Infrastructures of Urban Life Yet-to-Come (ChinaMade Brief #12). ChinaMade: Asian Infrastructures and the ‘China Model’ of Development.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2022. Boten Special Economic Zone on The People’s Map of Global China.

DiCarlo, Jessica, Sam Williams, Aaditee Kudrimoti, Pakhi Das, Melissa Butynski, Amrita Neelakantan. 2022. FOCUS-BRI: Framing Opportunities for Conservation by Understanding Safeguards in the Belt and Road Initiative. Report for the Center for Large Landscape Conservation and the Hewlett Foundation.

DiCarlo, Jessica et al. (other authors to remain anonymous). 2022. Understanding Social and Environmental Impacts and Safeguards surrounding BRI projects in Laos for Navigating the Belt and Road Initiative Phase II. Asia Society Policy Institute, New York.

Chen, Wanjing (Kelly) and DiCarlo, Jessica. 2021. Laos-China Railway on The People’s Map of Global China.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2021. Lost in Translation: Environmental and Social Safeguards for the Laos-China Railway. Global Development Policy Center Blog, Boston University.

DiCarlo, Jessica and Seth Schindler. 2020. Will Biden pass the America LEADS Act and start a new Cold War with China? Global Policy Journal.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2019. Case studies on megaprojects in Vang Vieng: The railway, expressway, and new city. Report for the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Poverty.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2017. Belt and Road Infrastructures: Modernist Dreams, Local Dilemmas? The Asia Dialogue of the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute.

Kathleen Epstein, Robin Marsh, Inger Måren, Isha Ray, Jessica DiCarlo, Dinesh Paudel and Bikash Adhikari. 2017. Research Summary: Adaptation after the 2015 Nepal Earthquakes: a smallholder perspective. Published by Forest Action.

DiCarlo, Jessica. 2016. Post-disaster community resilience in Nepal. UC Berkeley’s Master of Development Practice Blog.

R e s e a r c h

My research focuses on development, issues at the environment-society nexus, and China’s global engagements. I have conducted research on infrastructure, land and resource politics, disasters, rural livelihoods, critical minerals, economic zones, and US-China competition. I am committed to long-term fieldwork and seek aim to connect grounded cases with global processes. A critical human geographer, I contribute to debates on China’s role in shaping development, resource politics, and global capitalism. My research is informed by several years in China’s NGO and education sectors since 2008, and my interest in borderlands motivated research and other work in Laos, Nepal, India, and Tibet. Through my commitment to long-term fieldwork, I seek to bridge the gap between on-the-ground case studies and global dynamics. My current research is categorized below into four streams:

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Edited volume, special issues, dissertation

Peer-reviewed
articles and
book chapters

Book reviews

Policy and public scholarship