Tina Harris received her Ph.D. in Anthropology in 2009 from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). She is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and is a member of the AISSR Moving Matters research group.
Her main research interests include aviation, infrastructures, globalization in Asia, and the movement of people and goods across borders. She has conducted field research in Tibet, Nepal, India, and the Netherlands, and has published articles on the pressures of controlling air traffic, borderland airports, and competing discourses over the reopening of a Sino-Indian mountain border. She is author of Geographical Diversions: Tibetan Trade, Global Transactions (UGa Press 2013), a book that examines how state power is both articulated and circumvented by cross-border traders in the Himalayas.
http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/geographical_diversions
I am working on a new research project on aviation that will investigate how people working in air traffic management, route planning, and operations sectors are dealing with the recent shifts in global air travel against the backdrop of increasing climate concerns. I also have a number of articles (for instance, "Air Pressure: Temporal Hierarchies in Nepali Aviation;" "Trading Places: New Economic Geographies of Trade Across Himalayan Borderlands;" "Himalayan Border Crossings: Reopenings and Restrictions") and a full-length book manuscript (Geographical Diversions) based on my research on contemporary trade and trade routes in Tibet.
I am currently the co-chair of the Board of the International Institute for Asian Studies, and an academic coordinator of the Asian Borderlands Research Network (ABRN), which will hold its next conference in Seoul, Korea in June 2022.
Selected Courses
Technologies and Infrastructures (BA Anthropology)
Theory of Ethnographic Research/Fieldwork Seminar (MA Research Masters Social Sciences)
Perceptions of Asia (BA Anthropology)
Designing Fieldwork (MA Anthropology)
Comparative History and Sociology (BA Anthropology)
Mobility, Migration, Security (MA International Development Studies)
Research Methods and Design (MA Contemporary Asian Studies)
Thesis Seminar (MA Contemporary Asian Studies)