Emily is a socio-cultural anthropologist and visual ethnographer. She seeks to understand and document the lived experiences of international labor migration and climate change among communities in Nepal’s Himalaya. Her work bridges insights from anthropology, human geography and climate studies to reveal the complex nature of human mobility and environmental change.

Emily holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She also holds a MSc in International Development Studies from the University of Amsterdam and a BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Emily’s work is based in Mustang, a high-altitude region of Nepal formerly known as the Kingdom of Lo—a corridor of the ancient salt trade. The region is now home to 14,000 ethnically Tibetan people residing in settlements along the Kali Gandaki river running south through the Tibetan plateau to the Bay of Bengal. Over the past two decades, the effects of climate change have disrupted pre-Buddhist place-based deities and destroyed agricultural lands, as the concurrent outmigration of younger generations in search of better economic opportunities abroad has led to rapid depopulation. Building upon preliminary research she conducted in 2016, Emily explores how migration to New York City, on the one hand, is used as an adaptation strategy to economically sustain households in the face of environmental uncertainty, while, on the other hand, the outmigration of younger generations has sweeping cultural, linguistic and economic implications.

Emily is supported by a multidisciplinary doctoral committee: Dr. Sara Shneiderman (Supervisor), Associate Professor in Anthropology and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia; Dr. Sienna Craig, Associate Professor in Anthropology, Dartmouth University; Dr. Gaston Gordillo, Professor in Anthropology, University of British Columbia; Dr. Geraldine Pratt, Professor in Geography, University of British Columbia.

She currently splits her time between the Santa Cruz mountains in California, US and Mustang, Nepal.