Robert Barnett

Director, Modern Tibet Studies Program; Associate research scholar; Adjunct professor of contemporaryTibetan studiesModern Tibetan history, culture and politics; film and television in Inner Asia; nationality issues in ChinaProfessor Barnett founded and directs the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia, the firstWestern teaching program in this field. From 2000 to 2005 he also ran the annual summer program forforeign students at Tibet University in Lhasa and taught there. He is a frequent commentator on Tibetand nationality issues in China for the BBC, CNN, NPR, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post,and other media. He runs three projects on development and education in Tibet which include trainingprograms ecotourism and conservation. He teaches courses on Tibetan film, television, contemporaryculture, biography, and other subjects.His most recent books areLhasa: Streets with Memories,published by Columbia University Press inpaperback (2010) andTibetan Modernities: Notes from the Field on Social and Cultural Change,anedited volume (with Ronald Schwartz, Brill 2008). Recent articles include “Politics on China’s Periphery:Tibet” (in William A. Joseph (ed.),Politics in China: An Introduction,New York: Oxford University Press,Chapter 14 (2010), pp. 315-335), “Television Drama Series in Tibet” (in Valeria Donati (ed.),TibetanCinema. Discovering A New Political And Cultural Language,ASIA Onlus, Naples (2009), pp. 51-70), “TheTibet Protests of Spring, 2008: Conflict between the Nation and the State” (ChinaPerspectives,HongKong, July 2009). “Ethics in China’s wild west” (BritishJournalism Review,Vol. 19, No. 3, 2008, pp. 49-56), “Language and Ethnicity: Cadre-Speak in Contemporary Tibet” (InnerAsia10, 1 (2008), pp. 171-205), “Thunder from Tibet” (NewYork Review of Books,May, 2008), “TsogtTaijand the Disappearanceof the Overlords” (InnerAsia,2007, No.1: 41-76); “Women and Political Participation in Tibet” (n JanetHavnevik and J. Gyatso, eds.,Women in Tibet: Past and Present,Columbia University Press, 2006.Before joining Columbia in 1998, Professor Barnett worked as a researcher and journalist based in theUnited Kingdom, specializing in Tibetan issues for the BBC, theSouth China Morning Post, VOA,theGuardian,theIndependentand other media outlets. In the 1980s he founded and ran the London-basedresearch organization Tibet Information Network (TIN), then the leading independent source for newsand analysis concerning events in Tibet.