Tsering Lhamo is a first-generation Tibetan-American PhD student. Her research is taking place under the guidance of Dr. Emily Yeh at the Geography Department of the University of Colorado Boulder. Coming from an interdisciplinary background in international development and global health, Tsering’s research interests center on the intersections of sustainable development, political ecology, traditional medicines, and cross-border trade within the Himalayan region. As an American India Foundation (AIF) William J. Clinton Fellow from 2017–2018, Tsering worked with the Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative (MANSI) to conduct baseline research and interventions on reproductive health among adolescents in underserved female populations in rural mountain communities in Uttarakhand, India. Trained in biomedical sciences, Tsering has worked as a laboratory associate at the Yale New Haven Hospital. She has also served as an AmeriCorps volunteer where she tutored young students from underprivileged communities in Washington, D.C. Tsering holds a master’s degree in international development from the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, where she specialized in environmental sustainability and global health. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies with a minor in biology from the American University in Washington, D.C. Tsering is also a recipient of the U.S. Department of Education’s 2023 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for studying Nepali language.
Found in the Himalayas, the caterpillar fungus is an assemblage of organisms composed of a fungal body protruding from the head of its moth larva host. Valued within Chinese medicine and in biopharmaceuticals for its therapeutic functions, the fungus has been worth more than its weight in gold on the market. As a result, the fungus collection and trade are a source of as much as 50-90% of cash income for the Bhutia, Lepcha, Nepalese, and Tibetan people who participate in the fungus harvest and trade in the Indian Himalayas. However, not much is known about the caterpillar fungus trade in the Eastern Indian Himalayas. Tsering’s research seeks to understand the lived experiences of Himalayan communities in Siliguri region of North Bengal in the larger West Bengal state, using the caterpillar fungus trade as an analytical tool. Tsering will be working under the guidance of Dr. Swatasiddha Sarkar from the Centre for Himalayan Studies at North Bengal University in Siliguri, West Bengal. Dr. Sarkar’s expertise in the regional geography combined with his scholarship on labor and ethnicity will be paramount to my research on the caterpillar fungus trade in the region.