Student Training and Community Engagement

This project is designed around student and citizen engagement, drawing on models of public history and community-based research. From 2016-2018, Garrett and Price taught an immersive field course in Sikkim that focused on Buddhist pilgrimage travel, the influence of rivers on Himalayan cultures, and the interplay between religious institutions and environmental sustainability movements in the region.

In the summer of 2017, undergraduate Study of Religion student Damien Boltauzer worked with the KCC in Yuksam on digitizing their archival materials. Over the summer of 2018, Damien Boltauzer investigated a 29km pilgrimage route (gnas skor) around the peak of Drilburi in the Lahaul region of northern Himachal Pradesh (near the border with Ladakh), near Keylong and the ancient monastery of Gandhola/Guru Ghantal. This pilgrimage occurs on the full moon of June. Damien is now studying and working in Nepal for the academic year.

In 2017-18, students in Matt Price’s undergraduate course at University of Toronto, Hacking History, continued to work with the KCC leadership and staff and their archival materials. Damien Boltauzer continued to catalog the growing database of images, recordings, and archival documents. In May 2018, Garrett, Price, and six undergraduate students from University of Toronto traveled to West Sikkim to meet with KCC leadership and to lead a web development skills workshop for KCC staff and local community members.

The partnership between U of T and the KCC has led to the beginnings in 2018 of a project called Code at the Edge, which is developing a web development curriculum appropriate to the mountain region, to be piloted at the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalay School for Girls in Labang, West Sikkim.