Description

Columbia’s Modern Tibetan Studies Program (MTSP) integrates research, undergraduate and graduate training, and language teaching. Established in 1999, MTSP received an HLF grant in 2003 for an endowed professorship in history and program support. Twenty years later, MTSP proposes a project to be led by an associate research scholar and a team of eight community leaders from the Tibetan Plateau and broader Himalayan region who have studied and practiced Indigenous ways of adapting to climate change. MTSP will provide a site for exchange among practitioners, scientists, and scholars, leveraging partnerships with Columbia’s Climate School/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and other universities in North America as well as with researchers in the Himalayas (Ladakh, Nepal, Bhutan) and in China. MTSP’s Director will work with the team to share results through public events and publications (including platforms in Asia) and to create resources/tools for ongoing study and local application.      This grant would advance the Asia Program’s Goal 1 (Maintain the vitality of Asian studies and provide opportunities for engagement with Asian counterparts) and Goal 5 (Support border-crossing work).