Multiple researchers on the Heritage as Placemaking team co-organized a panel at the Annual Kathmandu Conference on Nepal and the Himalaya (27–29 July 2022).

Panel title: Heritage as Placemaking: The Politics of Erasure and Solidarity

Chair: Tom Robertson (Kathmandu University).

The panel took into account myriad and multifarious functions, uses, and values of heritage that are put to work for the purposes of governance, self-governance, sense of place, community as well as urban planning. These politics and practices are relationally co-constituted in the production of place, space and subjectivities with regressive and progressive possibilities. To this end, the papers in this proposed panel together document and examine the role of heritage in forming cleavages of divisiveness and difference on the one hand, and the possibilities for solidarity and commoning, on the other.

The HaP team presented three separate papers as part of the panel:

“‘Baakhan Nyane Waa’: Local heritage documentation for the future”
Presenters: Binita Magaiya (Social Science Baha), Alina Tamrakar (freelance researcher), Rija Joshi (Urban Planner), Shristina Shrestha (Lumanti Support group for Shelter) and Stefanie Lotter (SOAS, University of London)

“Placemaking and Placelessness in Janakpur:
‘Saffron City’ and the Subversive Politics of Mithila heritage”
Presenters: Sabin Ninglekhu (Social Science Baha), Monica Mottin (University of Heidelberg)

“When are water sprouts (Hiti) part of basic needs provision and when do they become cultural heritage?”
Monalisa Maharjan (Social Science Baha), Christiane Brosius (University of Heidelberg), Sabin Ninglekhu (Social Science Baha)

The conference was held at Social Science Baha and organized in tandem with the Association for Nepal and Himalayan
Studies, Britain–Nepal Academic Council, and the Centre for Himalayan
Studies–CNRS & Nepal Academic Network (Japan).