Research
I am a Sherpa scholar, currently based at the University of British Columbia in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the Department of Asian Studies.
COMMUNITY-CENTERED RESEARCH
I define community-centered research as one that is informed by the needs and priorities of the community, designed following community protocols of reciprocity and responsibility, and where the community decides how and how much of the research should be shared with who.
In picture: Declan, Maicen and Pasang in front of sacred Gokyo Lake, May 2023.
Community-centered research often requires multidisciplinary skills, beyond the capacity of an individual researcher, an academic discipline or an institution.
The research often requires multi-sited, multi-scalar, multi-perspectival and multi-sensorial approach that requires going beyond the static imagination of a community, the borders and boundaries of nation-states, the human-centric social world, and techno-managerial solutions.
The relationship with the community does not end when the life of a project is over.
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES
I believe that the recognition of epistemological value of Indigenous Knowledges in solving world problems is vital to respectfully advance meaningful engagements across knowledge systems. I take this approach in engaging with international climate assessments.
(See Knowledge Justice Collective for our work around this.)
TRAINING AND FIELDWORK
I was trained in four-fields anthropology with a focus on the cultural/environmental. I began my ethnographic research studying Indigenous Peoples’ concerns in Nepal for my M.A. and conducted multi-sited research on human dimensions of climate change in Pharak/Khumbu, Nepal for my Ph.D. These researches have been foundational to my understanding of Indigeneity and human dimensions of climate change in the Himalayas. My postdoctoral study focused on intersections of religion and ecology in the Kailash Sacred Landscape. As a Sherpa in the North American diaspora, I have also been documenting the history of Sherpas in the United States and related long-term socio-economic and cultural changes. I am currently enrolled in geography graduate program at UBC to study geomorphology.
CURRENT RESEARCH
My most recent research projects explore collective survival on warming planet. They are guided by the question:
How do we live in the midst of dying?
I combine Sherpa oral and textual history with geomorphology to get a deeper understanding of people’s relationship with the place they belong to under warming conditions. This is supplemented by my study of the societal impacts from accelerated melting of glaciers and associated geohazards in Khumbu.
ECOLOGIES OF CARE
I believe that just as we care for the ways we do research, it is also important to build communities of care for researchers from historically under-represented backgrounds in academia. Along with colleagues, I practice Ecologies of Care to build interconnected nodes for life-sustaining forms of knowledge co-creation.
