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.