(he/him/his) Research Associate, Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book BA (University of Delhi), LLB (University of Delhi), Ma and MPhil (Buddhist Studies, the University of Delhi), PhD (Buddhist Studies, the University of Delhi) Email: bhutiakalzangd at gmail.com   Hidden Stories - Project Areas of Activity Himalayan book histories Provenance research on Himalayan manuscripts and books Manuscript cataloging and digital access Research Interests Histories, cultures, and religions of Sikkim and cross-Himalayan connections Human and more-than-human relationships in Sikkim, focusing on ritual, land, food, and climate change Knowledge and cultural reclamation and repatriation Provenance histories

Biography

Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia is an Indigenous knowledge keeper and Lhopo scholar from west Sikkim, India. He completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Delhi. His research on human and more-than-human relationships in the valleys and mountains of Sikkim has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Robert H. N. Ho Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Selected Publications

“The Chile is My Uncle: Spicy Kinship between Humans and More-than-Humans in the Sikkimese Himalayas,” Food and Foodways 32.2 (2024): 122-141.

“Caring for the Warming Valley of Abundance: Relating to Cardamom in West Sikkim, India,” Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, April 2023. https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/caring-for-the-warming-valley-of-abundance-in-west-sikkim-india/

 

“Offerings from the Rivers to the Mountains: Mist and Fog as Connecting Life Force in the Sikkimese Himalaya,” in Storying Multipolar Climes of the Himalaya, Andes, and Arctic: Anthropocenic Climate and Shapeshifting Watery Lifeworlds, edited by Dan Smyer Yü and Jelle Wouters (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2023), 121-137.

 

“Ignoring the Protectors: Slipping Soil and Relations in Village Resettlement Projects in the West Sikkim Himalayas,” in Shifting Climates, Shifting People, edited by Miguel A. De La Torre (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2022), 175-186.

 

 “Caring for the Land, Caring for the Dharma: The Environmental History of Buddhism at Pemayangtse Monastery, Sikkim, as a Resource for Contemporary Conservation Initiatives,” in Religion and Nature Conservation, edited by Radhika Borde, Alison A. Ormsby, Stephen M. Awoyemi, and Andrew G. Gosler (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2022), 15-28.

 

“Can Pollution Bring Balance to the Hidden Land? Fiberglass Interventions in the Ecology of Sikkimese Cham,” Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 40.2 (2022): 46-65.

 

“Living with the Mountain: Mountain Propitiation Rituals in the Making of Human-Environmental Ethics in Sikkim,” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 28 (2021): 261-294.

 

“Decolonizing Sikkimese Bhutia Language and Cultural Production” (with Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa), New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 23.1 (2021): 75-100.

 

“Trees as Village Protectors, Guru Rinpoche’s Wayfinders and Adopted Family Members: Arboreal Imagination, Agency and Relationality in Sikkim,” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 25.2 (2021): 151-170.

 

“Purifying Multispecies Relations in the Valley of Abundance: The Riwo Sangchö Ritual as Environmental History and Ethics in Sikkim,” MAVCOR 5.2 (2021).

 

“Foxes, Yetis, and Bulls as Lamas: Human-Animal Interactions as a Resource for Exploring Buddhist Ethics in Sikkim,” Journal of Buddhist Ethics 25 (2018): 45-69.

 

“Looking Beyond the Land of Rice: Kalimpong and Darjeeling as Modern Buddhist Contact Zones for Sikkimese Intellectual Communities,” in Transcultural Encounters in the Himalayan Borderlands: Kalimpong as a Contact Zone, edited by Markus Viehbeck. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Press, 2017, 301-318.

“Local Agency in Global Movements: Negotiating Forms of Buddhist Cosmopolitanism in the Young Men’s Buddhist Associations of Darjeeling and Kalimpong,” in Transcultural Studies 1 (2016): 121-148.