Principia Nepal Study Abroad

Summer 2024
Lower Mustang, Nepal
with Dr. Nick Johnson

What are the lived realities of climate crisis? How do people adapt? How are dramatic changes shifting the ways that people live in and with the land? Do these changes perpetuate injustice, or work against it?

This study abroad took place in the Himalayas of Nepal, examining the unfolding realities of climate crisis in the small village of Lubra. Lives are transformed in the village as the village’s river, swollen by unusually heavy monsoon rains and glacial melt, washes away fields and buries homes in layers of thick sediment. Coursework examined how this slow disaster is tied to environmental justice, development, conservation, indigenous rights, and demographic and cultural change. This was done primarily through the act of drawing as an observational, analytical practice: drawing as a lens through which to understand landscape. Beyond crisis, the abroad also examined how the community is already doing the work of making a new future.

Work by Emma Franklin, Medara Udoekong, Myka Fenton, Riley Speidel, Avery Hanson, Dylan Hussey, Marshall Needham, Amelie Manger, and Adriana Rucks

Abroad Site