Zahid Ali is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology. His research investigates Pakistan’s rapid coal development in the Thar Desert under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), despite global efforts toward decarbonization. As the world moves toward cleaner energy, Pakistan is expanding coal infrastructure as a way to promote economic growth and assert national sovereignty. Zahid's project examines how state actors, engineers, and financiers justify coal investments amid the climate crisis, and how global knowledge systems—such as geological surveys and financial models—support this persistence. His research also explores how Indigenous Thari communities, displaced and ecologically affected by these projects, resist and reinterpret coal development through cultural, legal, and environmental claims. Through multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork across government offices, corporate boardrooms, advocacy groups, and Thari villages, the study investigates how energy infrastructure mediates power, governance, and contested futures. Zahid's project challenges linear energy transition narratives by emphasizing “energy persistence”—the continued influence of fossil fuels in shaping development ideologies in the Global South. By drawing on the anthropology of energy, infrastructure, and the state, his research highlights the complex interconnection of postcolonial governance, global finance, and ecological change. Ultimately, it offers a critical perspective on how marginalized communities navigate and contest extractive futures, contributing to broader conversations on environmental justice, climate politics, and South-South geopolitical relationships.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Ali, Zahid. 2023. "Book Review: CRAWFORD, KATE 2021, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence." New Haven: Yale University Press. Anthropology Book Forum.

Ali, Zahid. 2025. Wastelanding and Resistance: Climate Knowledge, Infrastructure, and Unruly Ecologies in the Thar Desert. https://www.weathermatters.net/wastelanding-and-resistance.