I am a socio-cultural anthropologist with long-term ethnographic commitments in the Himalayas and South Asia, and emerging research engagements in British Columbia, Canada. I serve as Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology as well as in UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs and Institute of Asian Research. My first book, Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), offers new explanations for the powerful persistence of ethnicity as a category of identification today despite the increasing realities of mobile, translocal lives. Broadly speaking, my research explores how social transformation is shaped by dynamics of citizenship and belonging (in relation to Indigenous, ethnic, religious and gender identities); cross-border mobility; conflict and political mobilization; territory and land use; development discourses and practices; and disaster aftermath and preparedness.