Nov 2013 Co-organizer (with Manduhai Buyandelger) and participant in “Spirituality, Secularism and Sovereignty: Forging New Religious Publics in Asia”, a roundtable discussion (sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion ) at the 112th annual American Anthropological Association Meeting, Chicago, IL
Nov 2013 “Take Two: Putting Nepal’s November 2013 Constituent Assembly Elections in Context” Elections in South Asia workshop, Yale University
Sept 2013 “Temple Building in Secular Nepal: ‘Post-Conflict’ Notions of Progress” Ethnicity and Religion in the Himalaya, a workshop hosted by the Departments of Anthropology and Religious Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark
April 2013 “Globalization, Development, and the Politics of State Restructuring in ‘Post-Conflict’ Nepal” American Ethnological Society/Association of Political and Legal Anthropology spring meeting, on the panel Interrogating the ‘Post-Conflict’: Temporality, Affect and Transformation, Chicago, IL
Feb. 2013 “Globalization, Development, and the Politics of State Restructuring in ‘Post-Conflict’ Nepal” Fifth Annual Global South Asia Conference, New York University
Jan. 2013 “Himalayan Border Citizens: Producing the Nepal-Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) of China Border Zone” Himalayan Impasse, University of Bonn, Germany
Nov. 2012 “Restructuring States, Restructuring Ethnicity: Federal Futures in India and Nepal” Forests, Rights and Insurgency: A Workshop on the State-Society Interface in South Asia, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. With Louise Tillin
Nov. 2012 Co-organizer (with Erik Harms and Shafqat Hussain) and participant in “Remote and Edgy: New Takes on Old Anthropological Themes”, a roundtable discussion (sponsored by the American Ethnological Society) at the 111th annual American Anthropological Association Meeting, San Francisco, CA
Sept. 2012 “The Missing Chapter: Gender, Ethnicity and the Power of Parallel Descent” Second Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS) Conference, on the panel Papers in honor of David Holmberg and Kathryn March, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
Aug. 2012 “Inequality and Affirmative Action”, Federalism, Inclusion and the Rights of Indigenous Minorities, organized by The Mountain Spirit, Kathmandu, Nepal
Aug. 2012 “Researching Intangible Cultural Heritage” Social Inclusion Atlas-Ethnographic Profile Orientation Workshop, Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal
July 2012 “Disentangling ‘Ethnic Federalism’ and Affirmative Action” Inequality and Affirmative Action: Situating Nepal in Global Debates, Kathmandu, Nepal. Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Tribhuvan University-Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal
March 2012 “Village Relations in a Mobile World: Himalayan Reflections on a South Asian Theme” Refiguring Village Studies: New Approaches to Agrarian Change in South Asia, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Nov. 2011 Co-organizer (with Alpa Shah) and participant in “From Class Struggle to Indigenous Rights? Comparing Processes, Policies and Politics Globally”, an invited roundtable discussion (Co-sponsored by the American Ethnological Society and the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology) at the 110th annual American Anthropological Association Meeting, Montreal, Canada
Oct. 2011 “Situating Darjeeling and Sikkim in South Asia and the Himalayas” and “Trans-Himalayan Citizens” First Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies Conference, Macalester College, St Paul, MI
May 2011 “Debt as a Condition of Mobility: Preliminary Reflections from South Asia” Debt: Interdisciplinary Considerations of an Enduring Human Passion, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, UK
May 2011 “The Himalayas as a Transnational Space” Environment, Livelihoods and Culture in the Himalayas, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies/South Asian Studies Council, Yale University
April 2011 “Restructuring the State, Restructuring Ethnicity” Presented at the Symposium on Ethnicity and Federalisation, Tribhuvan University/Social Inclusion Research Fund, Kathmandu, Nepal
Dec. 2010 “Restructuring a State, Restructuring Culture: Nepal’s Political Transition in Practice” Elites, Mass Publics, and the Political in South Asia, London School of Economics, London, UK
Nov. 2010 “Are the Central Himalayas in Zomia?” Second Asian Borderlands Research Network Conference, Chiang Mai, Thailand
July 2010 “Creating a Culture of Marginality: Nepal’s Current Classificatory Moment” European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies on the panel Inequality and Affirmative Action in South Asia, Bonn, Germany
Dec. 2009 “’Producing’ Thangmi Ritual Texts: Practice, Performance and Collaborative Documentation”, World Oral Literature Project workshop, University of Cambridge, UK
May 2009 Organizer and participant in the roundtable discussion “Anthropology, Indigeneity, and the State” American Ethnological Society conference, Vancouver, Canada
Oct 2008 “Circular Lives: Histories and Economies of Belonging in the Transnational Thangmi Village”, 37th Annual Conference on South Asia as part of the panel Labor Migration and Social Change, Madison, WI
Sept 2008 “Circular Lives: Histories and Economies of Belonging in the Transnational Thangmi Village”, Facing Globalisation: Belonging in the Himalayas, CNRS, Fréjus, France
Nov. 2007 “Culture as practice, culture as politics: ‘videoalizing’ Thangmi identity in India and Nepal”, 106th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association on the panel Visualizing Culture: Community and Citizenship in Asia, Washington, DC
Aug. 2007 “Strengthening Existing Identities or Building New Ethnic Boundaries? The Cultural Logic of Reservations in India and Some Comparative Considerations for Nepal”, Constitutionalism and Diversity in Nepal, Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal
June 2007 “From Practice to Performance: Transforming Thangmi Cultural Production in Nepal and India”, Ritual, Heritage and Identity, Ruprecht-Karls University, Heidelberg, Germany
Aug. 2006 “Border-crossing identities: preliminary research on ethnicity at the Nepal-China (TAR) Friendship Bridge”, Eleventh Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Koënigswinter, Germany
June 2006 “Transnational Tribes? The cross-border politics of reservations, identity and cultural practice in India and Nepal”, European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies on the panel Tribes of Mind, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands
Sept. 2005 “State policies and ethnic identities at Nepal’s borders: comparative perspectives from India and China” Negotiating Ethnicity in Nepal’s Past and Present, Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal
June 2005 “From Farmer to Communist to Maoist: An Ethno-historical Case Study of Politicization in Rural Nepal, 1980-2005” Trajectories of Socialism in Contemporary Asia: Anthropological Perspectives, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
June 2005 “Ethnic (p)reservations: comparing Thangmi ethnic activism in Nepal and India” Activism and Civil Society in South Asia, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
Dec 2004 “Hybridity in the Himalayas: the Terminological Construction of Ethnic Categories” Tenth Himalayan Languages Symposium, Thimphu, Bhutan
May 2004 “Hinduism and Maoism in Nepal: Competing Hegemonies?” American Academy of Religion-Eastern International Regional Meeting in the panel Religion and War in Nepal, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
March 2004 “Migrating Identites: The Case of the Darjeeling Thangmi” First Annual Graduate Student Conference on South Asia, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Nov. 2003 “Women, Ideology and Agency in Nepal’s Maoist Movement” 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association on the panel Trajectories of Socialism in Contemporary Asia, Chicago, IL. With Judith Pettigrew.
Sept. 2003 “Negotiating Borderland Identities: Comparative Concepts of Ethnicity in Nepal and Tibet” Tenth Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
April 2003 “The Formation of Political Consciousness in Rural Nepal: Lessons from Local History” Agenda for Transformation: Inclusion in Nepali Democracy, Social Science Baha, Kathmandu, Nepal
Oct. 2002 “Motivation, Memory and Resistance in Nepal’s Maoist Movement: A Case Study from Sindhupalcok District” War on Terrorism, War as Terrorism, a pre-conference sponsored by the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies at the 31st Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Nov. 2001 “The Path to Janasarakar: An Anecdotal Account of the Maoist Movement in Dolakha District” Seminar on the Maoist Movement in Nepal: Causes, Contexts, Implications, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, UK. With Mark Turin.
Oct. 2001 “Between Fluidity and Fixity: The Politics of Dharma, Gender, and Development in a Himalayan Village” New York Conference on Asian Studies (NYCAS), Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
June 2000 “Thangmi Death Rituals in Comparative Context”, Ninth Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands
Feb 2000 “Doing/Writing Dharma: A Look at Buddhist Women’s History in Mustang” Sixth International Conference on Women and Buddhism, Lumbini, Nepal
Aug. 1995 “Appropriate Treasure: Reflections on Women, Buddhism, and Cross-Cultural Exchange” Fourth International Conference on Women and Buddhism, Leh, Ladakh, India