Postdoctoral Fellow

Valerie J. Cranmer

Valerie J. Cranmer

Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute; Lecturer of Modern Japanese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Office:  TBD
Office Hours: M, R 10 am-12:00 pm and by appointment
Phone Number: TBD
Email: vjc2122@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: University of St. Andrews, 2026
MA: Norwich University, 2021
BA: Colorado College, 2010

Classes Taught

HSEA GU4847 Modern Japan

Research Interests

Modern Japanese history, transnational and comparative history, war and society, history of East Asia, gender and the military

Valerie J. Cranmer is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Her research explores the intersections of the military and society, through interdisciplinary lens, such as popular culture and gender. Broadly, she is interested in the history of conflict and colonialism in East Asia in the modern era. She is completing a scholarly monograph, tentatively entitled Enabling Abuse: The Imperial Japanese Army’s Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Organization and Its Place in Global Military History.

Selected Publications

“In Judgment of Unit 731: A Comparative Study of Medical War Crimes Trials After World War II.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 30. No. 1 (2023): 32-60.

Palden Gyal

Palden Gyal

Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Heyman Center for the Humanities; Lecturer, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Office: TBD
Office Hours: F 1:00- 3:00pm
Email:  palden.gyal@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: History-East Asia, Columbia University
MA: Buddhist Studies, Harvard University
BA: Philosophy, Duke University

Classes Taught

ASCE UN1359 Intro to East Asian Civilization: China
HSEA GUXXXX Rethinking Modern China Through its Borderlands
HSEA GU4XXX History of Modern China I

Research Interests

My primary project is a book manuscript developed from my dissertation: Mapping Power at Empire’s Edge: Statecraft and Sovereignty in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands, 1700–1950. The book reconceptualizes the Sino-Tibetan borderlands as active spaces of political negotiation rather than passive peripheries shaped by imperial design. It looks at how eastern Tibetan polities, especially the princely states of Gyalrong, shaped Qing imperial expansion and governance through political, economic, and religious agency from the early eighteenth century onward. Drawing on Tibetan- and Chinese-language archives, it centers local actors to offer a fresh perspective on empire and frontier governance in Inner and East Asian history. 

Alongside this, I am developing two further research projects: one on revolutionary politics and memory in twentieth-century Eastern Tibet, and another on the longue-durée environmental and climate history of premodern Tibet. Both build on preliminary research already conducted.

Selected Grants and Awards

Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff), 2025
Weatherhead Dissertation Writing Grant, 2024-2025
Mellon International Travels Fellowship, Columbia University (GSAS), 2022-2023
Climate Humanities Course Development Grant, Columbia Climate School, 2022

Professional Affiliations

Member, Association of Asian Studies (AAS)
Member, American Historical Association (AHA)
Member, American Academy of Religion (AAR)
Board Member, Amdo Research Network (ARN)

Selected Publications

“The Meu Kingdom: Unravelling the history of a Tibetan polity in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, 1700–1930,” Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines 55 (2024) 

“The Sociopolitical Impact of a Natural Disaster: The Snow Disaster of the Earth-Rat Year (1828) in Northwestern Tibet,” Climates and Cultures in History (2024) 

“The Lament of an Old Man.” In Longing to Awaken: Buddhist Devotion in Tibetan Poetry and Song, edited by Holly Gayley and Dominique Townsend (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024)

“The Role of Pain in Buddhism: The Conquest of Suffering,” co-authored with Owen Flanagan, in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Pain, edited by Jennifer Corns (London: Routledge, 2017). 

Cameron Foltz

Cameron Foltz

Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Lecturer, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
 

Office: 
Office Hours: 

Email: CF2747@columbia.edu

Website: www.cameronfoltz.com

Cameron Foltz is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Lecturer in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. His research examines the intersections of religion, governance, and territoriality in Inner Asia, with a focus on the environmental and political histories of the Tibetan plateau. Broadly, his work engages questions of sovereignty, monastic institutions, and the transformation of frontier zones through religious and economic exchange.

His book project, “Constructing Qinghai: Pastoralist Settlement, Monastic Territorialization, and State Incorporation (1724–1935),” argues that Tibetan pastoralists territorialized the Blue Lake (Chinese: Qinghai hu; Tibetan: Tsongönpo; Mongolian: Kokenuur) grasslands through the establishment of permanent monasteries. The monasteries’ integration of Tibetan pastoralists as their patron communities, their wider religious networks, and their role in taming local territorial deities remade the Blue Lake region. The Tibetan communities funded monastery construction through the sale of their sheep’s wool during an international wool boom (c. 1880–1929) fueled by US carpet production. After the collapse of the Qing Empire in 1912, the wool trade drew the Xining-based Ma militarists into the Blue Lake region. Ma Qi (1869–1931) and his brother and son, Ma Lin (1876–1945) and Ma Bufang (1903–1975), engaged in their own practice of territorialization that sought to secure their place in the nascent Republic of China. This process resulted in the establishment of Qinghai Province in 1929. However, the Chinese administrative presence on the Blue Lake grasslands was hollow and contingent upon the monastic territorialization established by Tibetan pastoralists.

Support for his research has been provided by Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award, the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia, and the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund.