Institutional Affiliation
Center for Asian Studies, CU Boulder
Education
Ph.D., Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, 2015
M.A., Religious Studies, University of Padova and Cà Foscari University of Venice, 2010
B.A., Philosophy, University of Padova, 2007
Regional and Thematic Interests
Contemporary Chinese society; infrastructure development; borders; trade; ethnicity and religion in China; Belt and Road Initiative
Profile
Alessandro Rippa is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Asian Studies at CU Boulder where he researches infrastructure development and the politics of mobility along the China-Myanmar border. He completed his doctorate in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen with a dissertation on the Karakoram Highway and China-Pakistan cross-border interactions. Prior to joining the Center for Asian Studies, he was a postdoctoral fellow at LMU Munich, part of the European Research Council funded project “Remoteness and Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World.” Alessandro conducted extensive ethnographic research in China since 2009 and he is currently working on a book manuscript that traces the development of the Chinese borderlands over the past twenty years. He is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands.
Selected publications
2018. Rippa, A. “Cross-Border Trade and “the Market” between Xinjiang (China) and Pakistan.” Journal of Contemporary Asia (accepted for publication).
2018. Horstmann, A., Saxer, M., Rippa, A. (eds). Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands. London and New York: Routledge.
2018. Rippa, A. “Old Routes, New Roads: Proximity across the China-Pakistan Border.” In: Horstmann, A., Saxer, M., Rippa, A. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands. London and New York: Routledge, 114-126.
2018. Saxer, M., Rippa, A., Horstmann, A. “Asian Borderlands in a Global Perspective.” In: Horstmann, A., Saxer, M., Rippa, A. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Asian Borderlands. London and New York: Routledge, 1-13.
2017. Rippa, A., Yang, Y. “The Amber Road: Cross-border trade and the regulation of the Burmite market in Tengchong, Yunnan.” TRaNS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia 5(2): 243-267.
2015. Rippa, A. Cuore dell’Eurasia: Il Xinjiang dalla Preistoria al 1949 [Heart of Eurasia: Xinjiang from Prehistory to 1949]. Milano: Mimesis Edizioni. ISBN: 978-88-5752-789-5
2014. Rippa, A. “Re-Writing Mythology in Xinjiang: The Case of the Queen Mother of the West, King Mu, and the Kunlun.” The China Journal 71: 43-64.