What is the Modern Tibetan Studies Program?
The Modern Tibetan Studies Program (MTSP) at Columbia University brings a contemporary focus to Tibetan and Himalayan studies through its teaching, programming, special projects, and community engagement. Seated at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, MTSP serves as a unique hub working with academic and other partners, including museums and community groups in the New York area, to extend scholarship beyond the university in dialogue with a wide range of knowledge-creators.
MTSP coordinates with faculty, students and staff to support a robust interdisciplinary program in history, religion, literature, philosophy, anthropology, film and culture. Columbia offers an integrated program for the study of modern Tibet with seven major components: research and publications, language teaching, librarianship, undergraduate and graduate training, a graduate student group, an active events program, and collaborative projects with domestic and international partners. The Program also hosts scholars from across Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia.
The guiding principles of the MTSP are:
- to foster a cooperative approach within the field;
- to use interdisciplinary methods of study;
- to conceptualize the subject as a regional and cross-border study involving areas such as Tibetan communities within China, Mongolia and the Himalayas; and
- to prioritize interaction with scholars from Tibetan regions.
MTSP seeks to support innovative minds and serve as a vehicle for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty, and especially, heritage scholars, to bring new ideas to the fore. MTSP events featuring researchers, filmmakers, writers, artists and musicians speaking about the realities of contemporary Tibet are actively attended not only by the Columbia community, but also locally and by an international community of viewers online. With generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Program is also engaging with indigenous partners to discuss the history and impacts of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayas, as well as Tibetan urbanization.
Following 25 years of vibrant programming and steady growth, we remain dedicated to our shared endeavors in Tibetan studies with a remarkable team of faculty, staff and students. Above all, we welcome collaboration and support as we work to secure the Program's sustainability while continuing to leverage the knowledge, experience and resources at Columbia for the broader good of all our partners, on campus and beyond.
If you would like to support our work, please contact Dr. Lauran Hartley at [email protected] or click here.
For information on related degree-granting programs in the academic departments of East Asian Languages and Cultures, as well as Religion and Philosophy, visit tibet.columbia.edu.
Why Study Modern Tibet?
The study of modern Tibet offers valuable understandings about pressing social and scientific issues impacting the world.
Tibet is significant as an ecological and geopolitical region, central to connecting Inner, East, and South Asia. As the highest place on earth, Tibet is often called a “third pole,” with major glaciers and rivers that bring water to about one third of the world’s population. The impact of climate change on Tibet and the repercussions for much of Asia are of major concern for scholarly and grassroots communities. The emergence of China as the world’s second largest economy and the significance of western China in China’s “Belt and Road” initiative make the study of contemporary Tibet as timely and as important as ever.
With intensifying state-led economic development and the increasing impacts of climate change in the contemporary period, the populations and high plateau of Tibet are at the forefront of rapid socioeconomic and environmental change. Tibetan culture has also long been influential within Asia; since the 20th century, that impact can be seen across the globe.
MTSP is concerned not only with ‘Tibet’ as the Tibetan regions incorporated in the People’s Republic of China, but with all areas where Tibetan peoples traditionally reside. This includes the study of Tibetan peoples and cultures within the Himalayas; cross-border studies involving areas such as China, India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Mongolia; and, additionally, the contemporary diasporic contexts.
We expansively define modern as the period from the 17th century to the present. In doing so, we break with other definitions of modern Tibet that view its modernity as a disruptive force tied to its incorporation into the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s and the upheavals that followed in the ensuing decades. We see modern Tibet as starting in the 17th century due to internal developments on the Tibetan plateau: the development of a bureaucratic state, the dramatic expansion of standardized monastic education and thus literacy, and the growth of trade and pilgrimage networks that connected Tibetans in new ways. By defining modern Tibet as having its beginnings around the 17th century, we also recognize the engagement of Tibetans with global intellectual transformations occurring in a period when the mobility of people, ideas, and goods was expanding throughout the world.