Dr Riam Knapp
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About
Riam is a post-doctoral researcher on the project Himalayan Connections: Melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a changing climate, a collaborative project with the University of Oslo funded by the Norwegian Research Council under its NORGLOBAL programme. The project explores complexities of environmental perception and decision-making at a pivotal moment of change in high-altitude communities in the Himalaya. Through long-term fieldwork the project will document community historical mechanisms for environmental management and examine them in light of the arrival of new communication technologies and new knowledges and framing discourses around climate change and sustainable development.
Riam’s doctoral research in human geography (2015) examined the relationship between Buddhist beliefs and practices and environmental conservation in Bhutan, addressing theorisations in cultural landscapes, political ecology and Buddhist modernities. She is interested in the human engagement with nature, with particular attention to non-Western perspectives and the ways in which conservation landscapes and environmental imaginaries are culturally inflected.
Riam conducts fieldwork in Bhutan, Nepal and Thailand and engages in collaborative multi-disciplinary research that employs methods from the humanities, social and environmental sciences, informed with a decolonial approach. She has taught the undergraduate geographical tripos, the international development diploma for continuing education, and lectured in political and socioeconomic dimensions of environment (political ecology). In addition to her academic work, Riam has professional experience in the NGO (development, conservation) and business sectors.
Education
2015: PhD. Dissertation: Environmental modernity in Bhutan: Entangled landscapes, Buddhist narratives and inhabiting the land. University of Cambridge, UK. Approved without corrections. Supervisor: Dr. Emma Mawdsley. Examiners: Prof. Geoffrey Samuel (external) and Dr. Hildegard Diemberger (internal).
2008-2009: M.Phil. Environment, Society & Development, University of Cambridge, UK. Dissertation:Bhutan: Dynamics of conservation and development.
1994-1997: M.A. Jt. Hons. Classics & English Literature, University of Edinburgh, UK. Dissertation: Nature in Mediaeval Lyric.