Letter from the Director

January 23, 2024

Dear Friends,

It is my pleasure to announce, at the beginning of a new calendar year, several newsworthy developments for the Modern Tibetan Studies Program (MTSP).

In November 2023, the Henry Luce Foundation awarded Columbia University a five-year grant for the MTSP to build on its collaborations with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Indiana University and others, to foster a global platform for exchange among practitioners, scientists, and scholars working on climate-related topics. Above all, the project will engage community leaders from the Tibetan Plateau and broader Himalayan Region who have studied and practiced indigenous ways of mitigating the impacts of climate change and building paths to resilience. The project is titled "Expanding Tibetan Studies: Indigenous Knowledge & Climate Change Research" and will launch on July 1, 2024.

We draw fresh inspiration from this recognition by the Luce Foundation and its renewal of the critical support first extended to MTSP after our founding in 1999. With an eye to the next decade, we hope you will join us this year in celebrating twenty-five years of programming and learning in the study of Modern Tibet. The vision and partnerships outlined in our twenty-year report remain central to our work, even as we deepen our commitment to bringing Tibetan Studies in conversation with a broader public. In our 25th year, we will host an anniversary lecture series to highlight a new cohort of young Tibetan scholars and their groundbreaking contributions to the field.

In 2023, we welcomed postdoctoral scholar Konchok Gelek (PhD, Department of Geography, University of Zurich), who joined the Weatherhead East Asian Institute in October and is teaching a seminar "Climate Change: The Tibetan Plateau as a Case Study" this spring. His work will serve as a basis for the resources we are developing and plan to share as part of our new climate initiative. In addition, three of our own PhD candidates earned their degrees last year, all under the direction of Professor Gray Tuttle, Leila Hadley Luce Professor of Modern Tibetan Studies: Qichen (Barton) Qian, "Benign Bellicosity: Tibetan Military History in the Eighteenth Century;" Riga Tsegyal Shakya, "Mirrors of History: The Poetics of the Tibetan Kingdom in the Time of Empire (1728-1750);" and Tracy Howard Stilerman, "Contextualizing Place Writing in Tibet: The Gelukpa Rewriting of the Buddhist Landscape in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." Kudos to you!

MTSP has several exciting events planned for this spring, including the film series "Legacies: Pema Tseden &; New Tibetan Cinema," and talks on Alashan and the Sixth Dalai Lama by Dr. Sangseraima Ujeed (U of Michigan), historical linguistics by Dr. Atshogs (Nanking University), and "Climate Change and its Impact on High Mountain Asia" by Dr. Lan Cuo (China Academy of Sciences). Find details on these events and more on our Events page.

We also want to draw your attention to our new URL: mtsp.weai.columbia.edu. While our updated website focuses on MTSP events and activities, visit our previous URL, tibet.columbia.edu, for information on course-offerings and degree-granting programs in East Asian Studies, Religion and Philosophy. Our updated website also features a new "Community Calendar" with worldwide listings for Tibetan Studies events available via online webinars and virtual conferences. Listings include in-person and virtual events at Columbia University ("CU Events") and in the New York City area ("NYC Events"), as well as hybrid events hosted at universities and other institutions internationally. The calendar, a joint project with the C.V. Starr East Asian Library, is maintained by Norzin Lhadon, MTSP student-assistant, as advised by Kristina Dy-Liacco, Tibetan Studies Librarian, who is now well settled in her second year at Columbia. Please check out the calendar—and email us if you have an online talk or conference to share: [email protected].

Before closing, I want to acknowledge the work of the previous MTSP directors who built and developed this program over the years: Robert Barnett (1999-2018), Gray Tuttle (2018-2019), and Eveline Washul (2019-2021). I aspire to follow their lead in ensuring that our work remains vibrant, engaged, and current. We also congratulate Professor Gray Tuttle on his appointment in July to chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. If you haven't done so already, please explore our website to learn more about the research interests and contributions of our affiliated faculty, graduate students, and alumni.

If you have questions about any of these developments or would like to contribute to the work of MTSP in one way or another, please do let us know!

With best wishes for the New Year and upcoming Losar,

Lauran Hartley
Director
Modern Tibetan Studies Program
[email protected]