Roshan Mishra with hosts Stefanie Lotter and Uma Pradhan (Nepal Conversations) 

In this second episode of the ‘Erasure’ series, Roshan Mishra highlighted how the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign began, what it has done so far to reclaim Nepal’s cultural properties, and why it is important to the community. The talk went over the campaign's successes, challenges, and a few examples of cases we have dealt with over the last two years.

Roshan Mishra is the Director of Taragaon Museum and a Kathmandu-based visual artist. He oversees the Nepal Architecture Archive (NAA), which is run by the Saraf Foundation for Himalayan Traditions and Culture, a Taragaon Museum patron organisation. Roshan is also the founder of Global Nepali Museum, Nepalian Art, and an initiator of the Mishra Museum, as well as a visiting faculty member at the Kathmandu University, Art and Design. Roshan is now actively involved in the Nepal Heritage Repatriation campaign (NHRC) to bring back Nepali lost and stolen heritage. Listen to the episode here.

Dr. Prem Phyak with hosts Stefanie Lotter and Uma Pradhan (Nepal Conversations) 

In our third episode, we welcomed Dr. Prem Phyak, who explored the multiple implications of the erasure of language in Nepal. By underscoring how the state has engaged in the strategic forgetting of the names and the historicity of the land, he examined how policies have both explicitly and implicitly erased multilingualism and promoted homogeneity until today. He furthermore discussed his interest in and experience with indigenous and multilingual education, and how his own experiences have shaped his research agenda.

Dr. Prem Phyak is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include language policy, multilingualism, language ideology, Indigenous language education, and teacher education. He has co-authored a book, Engaged Language Policy and Practices (Routledge, 2017) and published articles in several journals. Listen to the episode here.

Christoph Emmrich with hosts Stefanie Lotter and Uma Pradhan (Nepal Conversations) 

In the following episode, Dr. Christoph Emmrich dug into the specifics of rites and rituals among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, looking at the materiality and organizational tools behind these events, and focussing on making and consulting lists. By considering the list as a material and as a process, one that works in relation to multiple actors, he sheds new light on how things get done in Newar rites.

Dr. Christoph Emmrich is a Newarologist, Burmologist, Jainologist, and Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, where he has been teaching Newar, Burmese, Pali, Buddhist, and Jain Studies since 2006. When he does not teach, he divides his time between Lalitpur among the Newars, Mawlamyine and Mandalay among the Mons and Burmese, and Pondicherry among the Tamil Jains, conducting research on rites and ritual literature, shop-keeping, and list-making, as well as poetry, textual practice, and temple management. Listen to the episode here.

 Bryony Whitmarsh with hosts Stefanie Lotter and Uma Pradhan (Nepal Conversations) 

In this episode, Prof. Bryony Whitmarsh looked at the Narayanhiti Palace Museum (Kathmandu, Nepal) as a site that is “both present and disempowered.”  She argued that the intention behind those who authorised the museumization of the palace was to determine a particular way of remembering (and forgetting) Nepal’s royal past, a process that involved both fabrication and destruction. As the initial moment of the transition from monarchy to republic recedes further into the past, Prof. Whitmarsh explores the processes that consigned the palace to the past.

Prof. Bryony Whitmarsh is a Professor of Heritage and Museum Studies within the Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton and joined the Higher Education sector following a career in museums, bringing with her a wide range of experience including curation, learning, museum outreach and interpretation. She is currently Associate Dean International for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, with teaching focused on the historiography of architecture and interior design (with a particular emphasis on a global history of architecture), material culture and museology. Listen to the episode here.

 Mallika Shakya with hosts Stefanie Lotter and Uma Pradhan (Nepal Conversations) 

In this installment of the Erasure Series, Dr. Mallika Shakya (South Asian University, Delhi) discussed her work on the dissident Ralpha songs of Nepal and the ensuing patterns of remembering and forgetting. By situating this body of work within the ongoing anthropological discussions surrounding the epistemologies of writing culture, it seeks to build on the evocative power of poetry to stir conceptual conversations about nationalism, belonging and the passage of time.

Dr. Mallika Shakya is a Senior Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at South Asian University. Her work is interested in the social embedding of industrialization in capital cities and border towns and the poetic imagination of nation and border in South Asia. Her writing has been published in leading academic journals, and her monograph “Death of an Industry: The Cultural Politics of Garment Manufacturing during the Maoist Revolution in Nepal” was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. Dr. Shakya also serves on the editorial committees of three journals: Dialectical Anthropology, the European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (EBHR) and Society and Culture in South Asia (SCSA). Listen to the episode here.