Dapter: Smart Cities and Surveillance in Central Asia, with Jasmin Dall’Agnola

Dall'Agnola reflects on doing fieldwork under surveillance

This is the fourth episode of our new podcast. Find here the first, second, and third episodes.

“Dapter” is the Kazakh word for notebook—the companion of all researchers doing fieldwork in Central Asia. This podcast opens that notebook, featuring scholars reflecting on the stories behind their work in Central Asia and discussing what their research reveals about the region’s past, present, and future.

Jasmin has done extensive fieldwork across Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan during her doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships. Her work has focused on technology adoption, Chinese surveillance cameras, and authoritarian practices in Central Asia. In several other publications, she has also written about regional-specific research methodologies and fieldwork ethics.

Some of her open-access publications we touch upon during our conversation are: Researching authoritarian smart cities from below (2025), From Old to New Colonial Dependencies: Public Perceptions of Chinese Surveillance Cameras in Central Asia (2025), Fieldwork Under Surveillance: A Research Note (2023), From Romantic Advances to Cyberstalking in the Field (2023).

Listen to this episode on Spotify, Amazon Music, or Apple Podcasts.

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