Fellowship Year:
2026
Degree:
PhD
Research Country:
Nepal
Research Continent:
Asia
Project Title:
Crop diversity, provisioning, and inferring agrarian change in western Nepal
Abstract:
This dissertation project examines how crop diversity, food culture and provisioning practices in the Nepal Himalaya are being reshaped by social and ecological change. Based on 24 months of ethnographic and ethnobiological fieldwork in and around Arghakhanchi in western Nepal, the study uses diverse grain crops to explore how food systems, socioecological knowledge and everyday practices are produced and transformed through farming, provisioning and consumption. The research also investigates how agrarian change is understood and articulated across multiple social and ecological scales, linking local food systems to broader political, economic and climatic processes.