Caitlin R Hayes

Caitlin is a PhD student in Modern Tibetan Studies, specializing in modern Sino-Tibetan media
histories. Their research interests include minority-language broadcast media in the People’s
Republic of China and environmental history in Inner Asia and the Himalayas. Their current
research is focused on the proliferation of mass media communications – particularly satellite
television - on the Tibetan Plateau during the Reform period and its potential role in mediating
notions of environmentality among ethnic Tibetans in the late twentieth- to early twenty-first
centuries.

Prior to their arrival at Columbia, Caitlin earned a BA in Anthropology from George Mason
University and a MA in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. They have also
previously studied Chinese at Nanjing University and National Taiwan Normal University, and
Central Tibetan online via the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu.