Oyuna Baldakova is a research associate at the DIGISILK project at King's College London. She is also currently finishing her PhD degree at the Free University of Berlin, researching how China’s Belt and Road Initiative is being institutionalised in Beijing and implemented in light of the economic, political, and social realities of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Oyuna holds a Master’s degree in Modern East Asian Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. She has extensive experience in the field of international development, having interned at UNESCO Bangkok, managed an EU-funded project for Central Asia, and run communications at the International Organization of Folk Art (IOV).