Riga Shakya

Field: Sino-Tibetan History
Advisor: Gray Tuttle
Email: rts2131@columbia.edu

I am a Ph.D candidate in late Imperial Chinese and Tibetan history at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALAC) at Columbia University. I am broadly interested in Tibetan social and intellectual history, and the history of Sino-Tibetan relations during the Qing dynasty.

My dissertation research probes the relationship between literary text, selfhood and the metropole/periphery relationship by exploring the role of Tibetan lay autobiographical practice and kavya literature in Qing imperial expansion into Inner Asia in the 18th century. Other projects include a longue durée history of the Ganden Podrang’s (1642-1959) management of environmental disaster and a study of Tibetan language standardization and print culture at PRC minority publishing houses (minzu chubanshe) between 1953 and 1966.

My writing can be found in the Asian Review of Books, Comparative Literature Studies at Penn State University and Himalaya: The Journal of the Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies. I am founding editor of Waxing Moon: Journal for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies supported by the Centre for Digital Research and Scholarship, Columbia Libraries. I also have long running interests in contemporary Chinese and Tibetan film and literature. Film projects I have worked on have shown as part of the Busan, Toronto and Kavrlovy-Vary international film festivals.

Komei Sakai

Field: Japanese Religion
Advisor: D. Max Moerman
Email: ks2602@columbia.edu

Komei Sakai is a doctoral student of pre-modern Japanese religion. He received his B.A. (2013) in East Asian Studies from New York University. His primary research interest is in the religious iconography of Japanese arms and armor from the Kamakura period, with an emphasis on the engraving on sword blades related to the worship of Fudō Myō-ō. He believes that his research will be able to provide a new perspective in the understanding of the samurais’ religious beliefs. He is also interested in the exchange of swords in pre-modern Japan and China.

Qichen (Barton) Qian

Field: Tibetan and Chinese History
Advisors: Gray Tuttle and Zhaohua Yang
Email: qq2109@columbia.edu

Qichen (Barton) Qian is a doctoral student of Sino-Tibetan history and esoteric Buddhism from the 17th to 20th centuries. His research incorporates military and economic history of the Tibetan Ganden Podrang regime (1642–1959) and the Qing empire (1644–1912), as well as violence in Buddhism and material culture of firearms. Barton received his B.A. in Political Science/Math with a minor in Economics from Emory University and his M.A. in Tibetan and Chinese history from Columbia University.