The Réseau Chercheurs Népal (RCN) opens its 2026–2027 online seminar cycle on Friday 25 September 2026, 10am–12pm (Paris time), with two talks by early-career anthropologists on the relations between local communities and wildlife in Nepal’s protected areas.
Amar Hang (anthropology, human-animal relations) opens the session with « Entangled Lives: Exploration of human-elephant conflict & coexistence in Bahundagi, Jhapa. » Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the Mechi river corridor, the talk moves beyond a conflict-only narrative to examine how humans and elephants co-constitute one another within a shared landscape, tracing the evolution of deterrence practices, elephant agency, and forms of coexistence that do not exclude ongoing tension.
Dil Raj Rai follows with « Living Alongside the National Park: An Ethnographic Study of the Effects of Conservation Governance in Amritpur. » Based on fieldwork in Amritpur, a village in the buffer zone of Langtang National Park, the study examines how conservation governance reshapes farming practices, social roles, and daily life for residents navigating human-wildlife conflict and the Park’s compliance regime.
This seminar is part of RCN’s mission — founded in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake — to federate French-language research on Nepal and support new generations of researchers.
📍 Location: online (videoconference)
📅 Date: Friday 25 September 2026, 10am–12pm (Paris time)
🎟 Registration required: register here
👥 Speakers: Amar Hang, Dil Raj Rai
