Ladakh Archives - Welcome to

Ava Boussy is a recent graduate of Washington and Lee University with a double major in biology and art history. She first began working with 3D modeling through Florence As It Was, a professor’s project seeking to document the churches in Florence, Italy, as a way to present and preserve spaces. While Ava learnt technical skills through this process, she also began examining ways in which new digital technology could be used to promote accessibility in academia and the arts. She then joined Professor Melissa Kerin on a research trip to Ladakh. There, she not only workshopped digital modeling in an area vastly different from Florence but also gained a better understanding of working with local populations and how they promote and protect their cultural heritage.

Ava was a member of Washington and Lee’s women’s soccer team and enjoys hiking in the Blue Ridge and reading.

Ava’s Fulbright-Nehru project is promoting awareness and accessibility of Buddhist art, specifically Ladakhi Buddhist art, by creating digital models of Buddhist shrines and temples in Ladakh. The models are being created using a combination of photographs and laser scans to create accurate representations of the sites and works, and can be viewed on most digital devices. These will serve as references for future researchers and curious learners, especially given the fact that many sites are changing due to natural degradation and planned renovation and restorations.

Samira Patel graduated with an anthropology degree from the University of Chicago. She is especially committed to social justice and sensitive to how policies often exclude the most vulnerable people. She has spent almost a decade learning how this is particularly acute in climate- and environment-monitoring programs, having worked at the science–policy interface both at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and at the Center for Space Policy and Strategy. She joined the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) at the University of Cambridge as a master’s student to critically examine how the science–policy interface and digital data infrastructures impact local communities. This led her to publish a dissertation, The Rise of a Technoscientific Third Pole: Climate Science, Data, and Culture in the Himalayan Cryosphere. She has also written and spoken about various issues related to the “Asian Arctic”; the politics of data sharing and data infrastructures; remote sensing and outer space policies; and pluralistic understandings of cold and icy places. She is currently a Gates Cambridge Scholar at SPRI, where she is pursuing a PhD in geography.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, Samira is undertaking research for her PhD dissertation exploring the notions of climate futures in Ladakh. The inhabitants of Ladakh have long navigated the constraints of water in their high-altitude desert environment. Now, they must adapt to a shifting landscape due to climate change. Samira’s project is particularly focusing on the extent to which communities – local communities and communities of scientific practice – help shape and navigate these climate futures. Using ethnographic methods, she is examining how Ladakhi people leverage various scientific and/or local environmental knowledge to navigate the myriad challenges and anxieties of a warming planet.