Beril Ocaklı

Beril is a development practitioner turned academic. Now as a critical geographer, she follows discourses and practices of modernity, governance and development through extractive infrastructure projects, above and below ground, along corridors and roads, in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. She is particularly interested in how (geo)politicised infrastructures spearheaded by China and the EU restructure state-society-nature relations by intervening in (un)democratic governance but also by inspiring collective action. Beril’s research draws inspiration from multifarious communities and activists across the region that work for just democratic futures.

Before joining the Anthropology Unit as a collaborator in spring 2024, she was based at the Centre for East European and International Studies (ZOiS), Berlin where she led the research project “China, the EU and Economic Development in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.” Prior to ZOiS, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. There, she obtained a PhD in Geography with a multiscalar study situating global extractivism in the un/making of Kyrgyzstan’s gold rush.

Before returning to academia, she led transdisciplinary development projects on resource governance on behalf of the German government, the EU and other multilateral organisations. She has a background in Development Studies (MSc at London School of Economics and Political Science) and International Economics (BA Corvinus University of Budapest).

Research Interests

  • Critical geopolitics and infrastructural processes in Central Asia and the South Caucasus
  • Authoritarian governance and repression through resource extraction and development paradigms
  • Activism and protest movements for just human-environment relations
  • Interdisciplinary, multi-method co-laboration and research 

Selected publications

2023. Zehn Jahre Neue Seidenstraße. Ein Blick nach Ungarn, Serbien, Georgien und Kasachstan, with Krüsmann, V., Langbein, J., Peragovics, T. OSTEUROPA.
2023. A Shapeshifting China in Central Asia. ZOiS Spotlight.
2023. Resource Nationalism and Slow Violence in Kyrgyzstan, with Artman, V. The OXUS Society for Central Asia.
2023. Georgia’s Modern (not so Environmental) Problems. The Nature of Road and Energy Infrastructures, with Ibele, B. CBEES State of the Region Report.
2023. Extractive Socionatures and Resistance. The Un/making of Kyrgyzstan's Gold Rush. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
2022. The Violence in Kyrgyz Gold. ZOiS Spotlight.
2022. Making and unmaking gold as a resource. Resistant socionatures in Maidan, Kyrgyzstan, with Niewöhner, J. Geoforum vol 131 (May), pp. 151–162.
2021. Taking the discourse seriously: Rational self-interest and resistance to mining in Kyrgyzstan, with Krueger, T., Janssen, M. A., Kasymov, U. Ecological Economics vol. 189.
2020. Shades of conflict in Kyrgyzstan: National actor perceptions and behaviour in mining, with Krueger, T., Niewöhner, J. International Journal of the Commons, vol. 14 (1), pp. 191–207.

 

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