Katja Mielke

Biography

Katja studied at Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and completed her PhD at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) of the University of Bonn in 2015. She has an interdisciplinary study background in social sciences. Her research, analyses and policy advice are empirically grounded, mostly qualitative in nature, and aim at mid-range theorizing. In her PhD dissertation, Katja analysed local politics around natural resources governance and the effects of the international intervention in rural northeast Afghanistan. In this context, she conceptualized ‘social order’ as framework to analyse Afghan rural politics from an emic perspective in a setting where ‘the state’ played a limited role. Contrasting the local social order with the ‘interventionists’’ ordering ideas showed why the military, political and development intervention measures enabled the international community, at best, to establish the image of a state in contrast to intended objectives of full-fledged institution- and statebuilding in post-2001 Afghanistan. At bicc, post-doc research on social mobilization and self-organization of communities in urban peripheries of Lahore, Karachi and Kabul carried the concept of social order/ing further while focussing on urban governance, class, and the nexus of spatial and social mobility. Projects on the phenomenon of Daesh in Afghanistan, transnational Kurdish actor networks, the conflict mitigation- and peace-making efforts of Afghans in exile, transnational (im)mobility patterns of Afghans in Pakistan, and migration governance in (northern) Iraq followed. Currently, Katja leads the project ‘China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Pakistan and North Rhine-Westphalia’ (2021-24). She has been appointed as expert to the Afghanistan Study Commission of the German parliament for the period 2022-24.