Several research team members presented at the 7^th Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya, 24-26 July 2019, as members of the panel “From Epicentre to Aftermath: Ethnographic and Historical Views of Post-Earthquake Nepal”. This joint panel was organized in cooperation with the project “After the Earth’s Violent Sway: the tangible and intangible legacies of a natural disaster” (SWAY), based at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Findings from both projects stimulated lively discussion amongst conference attendees.

Research team member Bina Limbu discussed “… the rise of the one-roomed houses” and the ways that Nepal’s top-down reconstruction policies resulted in structures produced to meet housing grant guidelines, rather than the needs of earthquake-affected families.

Another team member Manoj Suji demonstrated, through a paper co-authored with Philippe Le Billon and Dinesh Paudel, the social impacts of disaster financialization that continue to be felt in Nepal – transforming cultural activities and increasing vulnerability for large swaths of the population through processes of dispossession, as householders bore the brunt of the costs and risks of reconstruction.

Jeevan Baniya, Anisha Bhattarai, and Sita Nepali explored discourses in Nepali newspaper od-ed pieces following the 2015 earthquakes and their role in creating ‘preferred’ viewpoints for understanding and critiquing the response and reconstruction.

Members of the SWAY team presented topics in dialogue with those above – from Prof. Michael Hutt’s analysis of the effects of disaster on Nepalese politics to Prof. Mark Liechty’s critical re-consideration of ‘causality’ to John Whelpton’s comparative look at past earthquakes in Nepali consciousness. These presentations often contextualized Nepal’s current post-earthquake reconstruction with the country’s experience of major earthquakes in 1934 and 1988, adding historical depth to the findings from contemporary research.

The partnership concluded a workshop in Denmark with a public symposium in Copenhagen on May 28th. This public seminar presented findings from our research project investigating the socio-political effects of Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes in dialogue with scholars working on disasters in other areas of the world. For more details, please find the event announcement here.

July 25-27, 2018

Hosted by Social Science Baha in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Click here to view this year’s panels and sessions.

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Annual Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya 2018

March 5, 2018

Hosted by the Himalaya Program at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Click here for the event listing.

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Catastrophe in Context: Household Recoveries from the 2015 Nepal Earthquakes

The 2015 Nepal earthquakes had catastrophic impacts on the lives and property of Himalayan peoples. Join the UBC Himalaya Program as Dr. Spoon discusses his study which focuses on four settlements in two of the hardest hit districts with differing access, aid, and populations. We randomly selected 400 households in these locations and conducted two ten-week research phases at nine months and 1.5 years after the earthquakes. Using household surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups, we assessed the roles of hazard exposure, livelihood diversity, institutional context, connectivity, and social memory in the recovery process. Employing multivariate statistics and content analysis, our study found that accessibility, hazard exposure, and livelihood diversity were the strongest drivers of recovery outcomes. We then triangulated our results in a series of local and national research return workshops with the study participants and key consultants 2.5 years after the earthquakes. Our findings can assist policymakers, practitioners, academics, and other stakeholders to better understand the dynamics of natural disaster recovery in rural mountain communities in Nepal, the Himalaya, and beyond

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Spoon is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University and Senior Fellow at The Mountain Institute. His research focuses on indigenous ecological knowledge inside and around mountainous protected areas in the Nepalese Himalaya and the Western United States. He recently initiated a new project on social-ecological recovery after natural disasters in mountain ecosystems, focusing on areas with catastrophic impacts from the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. In all of these projects, he utilizes collaborative methods and applies research findings to tangible projects created in participatory ways.

September 14-17, 2017

Hosted by the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

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Schedule: (Click here for the full schedule)

Reconstructing Nepal: Politics and Practice after the 2015 Earthquakes and Constitution

Thursday, September 14  C.K. Choi Building Room 120
6:30PM – Introductions and Welcome Dinner for Participants

Friday, September 15  C.K. Choi Building Room 120
8:30AM-9:00 – Breakfast and Registration
9:00 – Welcome, Land Acknowledgment, Remarks
9:15-10:25 – Introducing the Project (Sara Shneiderman, Katharine Rankin, Philippe Le Billon). Chair/Discussant: Deepak Thapa
10:40-12:05PM – Re/Construction (Dan Hirslund, Bishnu Pandey, Katherine Hacker, Jeevan Baniya). Chair/Discussant: Stephanie Chang
1:05-1:55 – Community Partner Presentations (TRAS, Russil Wvong; NCSBC, Alok Dhungana). Chair/Discussant: Mark Turin
2:00-3:00 – Graduate Student Roundtable (Omer Aijazi, Emily Amburgey, Amber Moore, Ian Turner). Chair/Discussant: Katharine Rankin
3:15-4:40 – Finance and Law (Dinesh Paudel, Ratna Shrestha, Subin Mulmi, Cameron Warner). Chair/Discussant: Philippe Le Billon
5:30 – Keynote Lecture “Nepal’s Prolonged Transition: End in Sight?” by Deepak Thapa

Nepal has been undergoing a political transition since the end of the Maoist-state civil conflict in 2006. Over 10 years later, a new constitution has been implemented and one of the three mandated elections to various levels of government has been completed. Dissension on the contours of federalisation is on the wane, and the country appears to be moving ahead. The talk will discuss whether this means the transition is coming to an end, and what the contours of the Nepali state are likely to be in the future.

Saturday, September 16  C.K. Choi Building Room 120
8:30AM-9:00 – Breakfast
9:00-9:45 – Overview of Project Activities, Outputs, and Logistics (Sara Shneiderman, Katharine Rankin, Philippe Le Billon, Deepak Thapa)
10:00-12:00 Toolbox Dialogue: Discussion of Disciplinary Assumptions/Epistemologies – Facilitated virtually by the Toolbox team
1:30-3:00 – Thematic Small Groups: Construction, Finance, Law
3:15-4:00 – Student Engagement Plans
4:00-5:00 – Discussion of Publication Plans, Other Outputs
5:00-5:30 – Review and Wrap Up

Sunday, September 17 – Peter Wall Institute
9:30AM-11:30 – Wrap-up, Developing Task List and Timelines for Next Steps
2:00PM-4:00 – Community Forum in Nepali co-sponsored with the Nepal Cultural Society of BC (NCSBS) at UBC Robson Square Downtown campus (Jeevan Baniya, Subin Mulmi, Dinesh Paudel, Deepak Thapa)