As part of the Women's Day celebration, Lamakaan brings to you a talk by Manjari Mehta.

Mountain communities in transition: a personal journey of images of change

Manjari Mehta is a social anthropologist whose work focuses mainly on social and gender issues in the Himalaya. She has a Ph.D. from Boston University, taught at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology in the United States for many years, and more recently worked as a Gender Specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has extensive experience in non-formal teaching, field-based research and project evaluation. Her present research interests focus on communities in the low and middle hills of Uttarakhand that are increasingly peri-urban in nature. A work in progress, When the Koel Sings: A Memoir of Fieldwork, depicts these shifts from what was once a largely rural existence to increasingly urban-based lifestyles and aspirations. She makes her home in Dehra Dun; when she is not tending an unruly garden and an even unrulier pack of five dogs she walks in the mountains of Nepal and Uttarakhand.