The Woodrow Wilson School will host a public talk by Robert Barnett, Director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University titled " at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 6, in Bowl 016, Robertson Hall, on Princeton University campus.

Barnett is an Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Tibetan Studies Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, and founder and director of the school’s Modern Tibetan Studies Program; the first Western teaching program in this field. He ran an annual summer program for foreign students at Tibet University in Lhasa from 2000 to 2005 and teaches courses on Tibetan film, television, biography, and other subjects.

Before joining Columbia in 1998, Barnett worked as a journalist and researcher in the United Kingdom, specializing in Tibetan issues for the BBC, the South China Morning Post, VOA, the Guardian, the Independent and other media outlets. From 1987 to 1998, Barnett was director of an independent Tibet news and research project in London.

Barnett’s latest book is titled, “Tibetan Modernities: Notes from the Field of Social and Cultural Change.” It is the first major publication in the West to study modernity and its impact on contemporary Tibet. The book is based on field work by researchers in anthropology, sociology, environmental science, literature, art and linguistics. It presents essays on education, economics, childbirth, environment, caste, pop music, media and painting in Tibetan communities today.

This event is co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School and the Center for the Study of Religion.  It is part of the series “Crossroads of Religion and Politics” and is free and open to the public.