Thomas White is a Research Associate at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, and a member of its Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in the west of Inner Mongolia, China, where his research has examined the politics of pastoralism and culture in the context of state environmentalism, as well as the transformations accompanying infrastructure  development in this archetypally remote region. His current research project explores the development of Mongolia’s economic and geopolitical relationship with China as it manifests in the meat and livestock trade, looking in particular at problems of logistics, standards and animal disease.

Emilia Sułek is a social anthropologist with expertise covering political and economic anthropology in broadly understood Central Asia. As a member of the research project “ROADWORK: An Anthropology of Infrastructure at China’s Inner Asian Borders” (roadworkasia.com) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, she has been working on the unexpected side-effects of current infrastructural investments in Kyrgyzstan. In her earlier work, Emilia was interested in reconsidering the impact of medicinal fashions in China on the pastoral communities inhabiting the Tibetan plateau, which happens to be an important supplier of the Chinese pharmaceutical market. Her book, Trading Caterpillar Fungus in Tibet: When Economic Boom Hits Rural Area, was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2019.