Presentations at the Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal & The Himalaya

 

More than ten members of the partnership presented in a double panel at the Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal & The Himalaya held at the Shanker Hotel between July 25th and 27th, while the majority of other partnership members were in attendance.  Their presentations, drawn from their individual ongoing work related to partnership research themes, sparked lively discussion among the diverse attendees at the conference, serving as an invaluable exchange of ideas for partnership members and a chance to publicize the partnership to a broader scholarly community in Nepal, receive feedback and field questions.

 

The two consecutive panels were entitled “Re/Construction: Expertise, Politics, and Materiality in Nepal’s Ongoing Transformation (A and B)” and included Sara Shneiderman, Dan Hirslund, Bishnu Pandey, Philippe Le Billon, Dinesh Paudel, Omer Aijazi, Jeevan Baniya, and Social Science Baha research associate Amrita Gurung. A third panel featured scholars from our partnership speaking about work on a related project, “Infrastructures of Democracy: Road Building as Everyday Practice in Nepal’s Agrarian Districts”, including its Principal Investigator, Katharine Rankin (who is a co-investigator on our grant) who presented a paper with Pushpa Hamal and Elsie Lewison, and Co-Investigator Sara Shneiderman (who is Principal Investigator on our grant) as discussant. The full list of panels and sessions can be viewed here.

 

Additionally, the SOAS-based project “After the Earth’s Violent Sway: The Tangible and Intangible Legacies of Earthquakes in Nepal” presented their ongoing research in a panel of the same name. Presenters included Michael Hutt, Stefanie Lotter, and John Whelpton, who spoke on literary, heritage, and historical dynamics of the 2015 and 1934 earthquakes in Nepal. Dialogue between the scholars from these related projects were especially fruitful, providing platforms to further develop each project’s themes, and exploring potential topics for future collaboration.

 

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