Teaching & Student Research

Courses

EALAC GU4616: Climate Change: The Tibetan Plateau as a Case Study (Fall 2025)

This course, taught by WEAI Postdoctoral Scholar, Dr. Tashi Dekyid Monet, examined the intricate interplay between climate change, human activities, and environmental policies on the vulnerable Tibetan Plateau, the source of rivers for 3 billion people downstream. Topics covered included ecology, historical climate shifts, glacial retreat, water resource management, rangeland degradation and restoration, socioeconomic impacts, climate adaptation, and urbanization. With a multidisciplinary approach, and through lectures, discussions and guest speakers, students gained a holistic understanding of this critical issue and learned skills to interpret and synthesize scientific research into a broader humanities context.

Climate Change: Tibetan Plateau as a Case Study (Spring 2024) 

This course, taught by WEAI Postdoctoral Scholar, Dr. Konchok Gelek, examined the intricate interplay between climate change, human activities, and environmental policies on the vulnerable Tibetan Plateau, the source of rivers for 3 billion people downstream. Topics covered included ecology, historical climate shifts, glacial retreat, water resource management, rangeland degradation and restoration, socioeconomic impacts, climate adaptation, and urbanization. With a multidisciplinary approach, and through lectures, discussions and guest speakers, students gained a holistic understanding of this critical issue and learned skills to interpret and synthesize scientific research into a broader humanities context.

The Third Pole: A Climate History of the Tibetan Plateau (Spring 2023)  

The Climate Humanities Initiative at Columbia University awarded Professor Gray Tuttle (along with Dr. Hưng Nguyễn (Lamont-Doherty) and Ph.D. candidate Palden Gyal) funding to develop a course on the climate history of Tibet. As one of the ten recipients, the new course The Third Pole: A Climate History of the Tibetan Plateau employed an interdisciplinary approach and brought together research findings from “the archives of nature” (climatological research data) with studies from “the archives of society” (physical and written sources left by humans) to examine how historical changes in climate have affected human development and society on the Tibetan plateau. In light of global climatic events and anomalies such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age, the class discussed and explored how such climatic conditions and events might have triggered and contributed to socioeconomic, political, and cultural developments in Tibet and the Himalayas.

Tibetan Rivers and Roads: Infrastructure, Environment & Urban Lives (Spring 2023)

This course, developed and taught by Dr. Lauran Hartley, examined the transformation of natural environments, rural and urban landscapes on the Tibetan Plateau in the 20th and 21st centuries, with a special emphasis on the material and social lives of rivers, roads and infrastructure. This class drew on primary source readings (in English) and maps, as well as secondary readings in anthropology and human geography, to examine the processes of infrastructure creation, national integration, urbanization and adaptation in the Tibetan regions of China.