Research Interests

Political and Economic Anthropology, value, commodification, labor and capital, expertise and tacit knowledge, history of geosciences.

Ping-hsiu Alice Lin is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology. She is currently working on a book project entitled Precious Economies, which examines contemporary efforts to render minerals into precious stones through labor, science, and artisanship in the gemstone industry in Pakistan and beyond. Drawing upon multi-sited fieldwork and archival research, she shows how the valuation of gems is entangled in different imperial circuits of extraction and commerce, and more recent developments in expertise around provenance and qualities. The book elucidates the material economy of a precious commodity and the way it extends across different people and sites of trade and production in Asia.

Publications: 

2022 | “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Ethics of Fieldwork in Northwest Pakistan, International Quarterly for Asian Studies, 53(4), 587-612.

2022 | “Geographies of the Classical: Kathak Across India and Hong Kong”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 23(4), 509-525.

2022 | (co-authored with Marya Hannun and Annika Schmeding) Disentangling the “War on Terror”: Present Pasts and Possible Futures. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 54 (2), 338–339.

2017 | “Chinese in Pakistan: diasporic identity, faith and practice.” Asian Anthropology 16, no. 2 (2017): 133-147.