Monalisa Maharjan obtained a Master’s Degree in Human and Natural Resources Studies form Kathmandu University (Nepal) and pursued her doctoral studies under the Erasmus Mundus Programme. In 2016 she received her PhD in History of Art and Heritage Studies from the University of Évora with a dissertation entitled “Linking Heritage: The Yenya Punhi Festival as a Path to Reinforce Identity. The Kathmandu Experience”. During her PhD studies, she focused on the link between tangible and intangible heritage and on the question why safeguarding efforts that only pay attention to the tangible are not enough for long-term heritage conservation. In conclusion of her research she stressed the need to learn from and apply indigenous ways of heritage conservation through community involvement.
Her passion for both the heritage of the people and for the people was the impulse for her engagement in the field of heritage conservation, already perceptible in her Master studies on such issues as the relationship of people and authorities in the area of conservation, or the sometimes conflicting interests associated to the World Heritage Site of Kathmandu Valley. Currently, she centres her research on the response to heritage protection after the 2015 earthquake in Kathmandu Valley and is actively involved in the campaign to rebuild Kasthmandapa (in Kathmandu) by providing support to research and documentation.
Indigenous knowledge, community participation, people and their social linkages, living heritage, and questions of memory and identity are the topics she is most interested in.
Some publications on heritage:
