Cultural Geography About Us

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About Us: Participants in Tibetan and Himalayan Historical and Cultural Geography

The site overall has a scholarly advisory board that is responsible for overseeing the content.

  • external link: David Germano of the University of Virginia
  • external link: Jann Ronis of the University of California at Berkeley
  • external link: Karl Ryavec of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point
  • Kurtis Schaeffer of the University of Virginia
  • external link: Gray Tuttle of Columbia University

David Germano and Karl Ryavec were the founders of the initiative; Germano has coordinated technical and content aspects of the program, while Ryavec has played the key role in organizing geographical data input and processing for contemporary administrative units and monasteries. Steven Weinberger of the University of Virginia is the site’s overall manager, and performs crucial roles in supervising processing of content, liaisoning with programmers, coordinating scholars, and much more.

Content Scholars

The site consists of the convergence of data and scholarly analysis from scores of individuals and projects around the world who are committed to using the site’s sophisticated technology for publishing online. Thus the number of participants at this level – scholars, photographers, videographers, students, community residents, and others – far exceed what we can document here. We will thus leave their credit mostly to individual items they contributed, which should have their names clearly cited in the metadata. We plan in the next phase to assign editors to various areas – principal cultural regions, feature types, and so forth – and will document that on the site at that point.

We would be remiss, however, if we did not cite those individuals who played key roles in organizing large-scale contributions related to their own scholarship:

  • Kenneth Bauer: contributed Nepal data.
  • external link: John Vincent Bellezza: behind the Antiquities of Zhang Zhung website published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Historical and Cultural Geography.
  • The Bönpo Monastery team: the contribution of the English-language survey of Bönpo monasteries by Dondrup Lhagyal, Phuntso Tsering Sharyul, Tsering Thar, Charles Ramble and Marietta Kind, with editing by Samten G. Karmay and Yasuhiko Nagano.
  • José Cabezón: behind the Sera Monastery website published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Historical and Cultural Geography.
  • Chönpel: contributed his series of Tibetan-language books surveying monasteries in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
  • Georges Dreyfus: behind the Drepung Monastery website published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Historical and Cultural Geography.
  • Drongbu: contributed his Tibetan-language survey of early monasteries in central and southern Tibet.
  • Tsering Gyalpo: contributed his Tibetan-language survey of the history, polities, and monasteries of Ngari western Tibet.
  • Tsering Gyurme: contributed his massive compilation of multiple authors’ Tibetan-language essays on Kham eastern Tibet monasteries.
  • David Holmberg: contributed Nepal data.
  • Kath March: contributed Nepal data.
  • external link: Jann Ronis: organized the Kham Eastern Tibet historical polities data set with initial input from Tsomo.
  • Will Rourk: behind the Meru Nyingpa Monastery website published by the Tibetan and Himalayan Historical and Cultural Geography.
  • external link: Karl Ryavec: organized the creation of initial data sets on historical polities in Central Tibet, monasteries across Tibet, and contemporary administrative units in China.
  • Kurtis Schaeffer: wrote the Central Tibet historical polities introductory essays.
  • external link: Mark Turin: as director of the Digital Himalaya project, contributed Nepal place name, location, and census data, along with maps.
  • external link: Gray Tuttle: has directed the Amdo Northeastern Tibet projects in monasteries and historical polities.

Content Staff

The publication of scholarly resources and data involves many intermediate steps in processing the data – inputting, interpreting, editing, proofing, marking up, analyzing, translating, scanning, cataloging, and the like. Over the years, scores of staff have made crucial contributions to the site’s content. Since their names are not profiled in metadata, we acknowledge their contributions herein.

The current staff include:

  • Brad Aaron: from 2009, has played important roles in organizing field trips in Tibetan areas as well as in helping develop an image cataloging workflow system.
  • Tashi Dekyid: plays a key role in relationship to Kham place data.
  • Dudul Dorje: since 2010 has managed all Qinghai place data collection, input, and processing.
  • John Isom: plays an important role in terms of cartographic design.
  • Pema Namgyal: has supervised some of the largest place data input projects from Lhasa.
  • David Newman: from 2003 was the initial manager of all place and image data, and of late, continues to play an important role in reviewing and correcting earlier data sets.
  • Rinchenkar: since 2010 has supported Qinghai place work as manager of UVa work in Qinghai.
  • Tsehua Washu: since 2010 has played important roles in contributing to place data work from his UVa base in Chengdu.
  • Steven Weinberger: from 2009, has overseen and managed all place-related content work in THL, and in this role has played the most central role of all staff.

Past staff have included:

  • Geoffrey Barstow: played key data processing roles in support of the Antiquities of Zhang Zhung project.
  • Suzanne Bessenger: played key roles in place data processing at UVa, including the lakes and rivers project and the Bönpo monasteries project.
  • Ben Deitle: played key roles in place data processing at UVa with a special focus on large monastic data sets.
  • Quentin Devers: led map scanning and cataloging, as well as some place data work at UVa in 2008-2009.
  • Dominic Di Zinno: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.
  • Pakpa Dondrup: led the project’s video work in Qinghai in 2010-2011.
  • Nawang Dorje: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.
  • Dan Haig: was project manager for a transitional period as the earlier XML data was migrated to Ruby on Rails.
  • Chris Hatchell: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.
  • Bill McGrath: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.
  • Alison Melnick: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.
  • Elizabeth Miller: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.
  • Karma Ngodup: played key roles in monastic data input from his previous position at the University of California at Berkeley.
  • Michael Ryan: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.
  • Michael Schuman: played key roles in place data processing at UVa.

The Geographical Technology of the Site

David Germano of the University of Virginia has overseen the technical development and design of the site, with a long list of skillful programmers from the University of Virginia contributing to the site’s architecture and implementation. The current main programmer of the Place Dictionary is Andres Montano, while Ron Bentley, Mark Ferrara, Than Grove, and Heiser Mazariegos support various dimensions of the overall technology.

  • Ron Bentley: has been the key Open-GIS programmer over the last few years.
  • Mark Ferrara: has made crucial contributions in the visual styling of the site
  • Wayne Graham: has helped support our use of UVa servers in relationship to the project, including advice on some technical issues.
  • Than Grove: the architect of the text publishing system for place-focused books, as well as making key contributions to the overall integration of various applications in the site.
  • Andres Montano: current architect of the Place Dictionary and Media Management system, as well as designer of the Knowledge Maps.
  • Heiser Mazariegos: has played key roles in programming of the Place Dictionary and Knowledge Maps.
  • Bethany Nowviskie: as director of most of the staff from the UVa Library who contributed to the geographical technologies we use, has played an important role in supporting the project’s technical development.

Past contributors have included:

  • Tom Benner: led a crucial period of the Place Dictionary’s implementation in Ruby on Rails in a user-friendly version, and designed the published release of Geonetwork and Geoserver for the Map Collections and Interactive Map, respectively.
  • Joe Gilbert: consulted on the adaptation of the UVa Library’s implementation of Geonetwork for THL’s Map Collections.
  • Matt Mitchell: co-led the migration of the Place Dictionary from XML to Ruby on Rails.
  • David Newman: was project manager for crucial years during the initial XML implementation of the THL Place Dictionary, as well as designer of an earlier version of the georeference image cataloging system.
  • Mikael Ricardo: did important work in 2009-2010 for the Interactive Map.
  • Mel Riffe: did important transitional programming on the THL Place Dictionary during its early stages in Ruby on Rails.
  • Perry Roland: did the original XML programming of the THL Place Dictionary.
  • Bess Sadler: co-led the migration of the Place Dictionary from XML to Ruby on Rails.
  • Adam Soroka: led the initial implementation of Geoserver for the Interactive Map technology.
  • Thorny Staples: led the original initiative of designing the THL Place Dictionary.

Provided for unrestricted use by the external link: Tibetan and Himalayan Library