Emily T. Yeh

  • Professor of Geography
  • 2024 Guggenheim Fellow
  • College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Distinction
  • Nature/society geography; political ecology; cultural politics; development; Tibet; China
  • Faculty Affiliate: Center for Asian Studies, CNAIS, C3BC
  • Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 2003
  • Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, 2023-24
  • Past-president, American Association of Geographers (2021-22)
  • HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
  • ENVIRONMENT-SOCIETY
Address

 

Grad Students

Drolma Gadou

Phurwa Gurung

Tsering Lhamo

Fan Li

Emma Loizeaux

Tenzin Yangkey

Research Interests

My main research interests are on questions of power, political economy, and cultural politics in the nature-society relationship. Using primarily ethnographic methods, I have conducted research on natural resource conflicts, environmental history, development and landscape transformation, pastoralism, and emerging environmentalisms in Tibetan areas of China. In addition, I have also worked on several NSF-funded interdisciplinary, collaborative projects on putative causes of rangeland degradation and vulnerability to climate change on the Tibetan Plateau.  I am also engaged in research on weather modification in the context of anthropogenic global heating, as well as the politics of decarbonization in Indonesia.

More Info

Despite living in Colorado and doing research in Tibet, I love the ocean and try to scuba dive when I get the chance. Fortunately, I also enjoy cycling and camping. I am also a "professora" of capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art, and mom of Osel and Seldron. 

Recent Courses Taught

  • Spring 2024  GEOG 3022  Climate Politics amd Policy
  • Spring 2024  GEOG 5161  Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2023  GEOG 5632  Development Geography
  • Spring 2023  GEOG 5161  Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2022 GEOG 6402  Political Ecology
  • Spring 2022  GEOG 5161  Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2021 GEOG 5652  Introduction to Social Theory
  • Spring 2021  GEOG 5161  Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2020  GEOG 5632  Development Geography
  • Spring 2020  GEOG 5161  Research Design in Human Geography
  • Spring 2019  GEOG 3822  Geography of China
  • Fall 2019  GEOG 5632  Development Geography

Recent Publications

Emily T. Yeh.  2025. Global geographies of weather modification in an era of climate change.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Emily T. Yeh and Emma Loizeaux. 2024. “China at COP-27: CBDR, National Sovereignty, and Climate Justice” Climate and Development. 16(10) 907-917.

Yonten Nyima and Emily T. Yeh 2023. "The construction of consent for high-altitude resettlement in Tibet.” The China Quarterly. 254: 429-447.

Emily T. Yeh 2022.  “The making of natural infrastructure in China’s era of ecological civilization” The China Quarterly, 255: 611-627

Emily T. Yeh  2022. "The cultural politics of new Tibetan entrepreneurship in contemporary China: Valorization and the question of neoliberalism.”  Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 47(1):139-152.

Emily T. Yeh and Gaerrang. “Pests, keystone species, and hungry ghosts: The Gesar Epic and Human-pika relations on the Tibetan Plateau” cultural geographies. 28(3) 461-478