Currently working on identity, representation, sovereignty, governance and digital politics.
Åshild Kolås is a social anthropologist and Research Professor at PRIO. She has carried out fieldwork in multi-ethnic communities in India and China, and has written on Tibet, Nepal, Inner Mongolia and Northeast India with a focus on governance and governmentality, identity politics, discourse and representation. Among her latest books are Women, Peace and Security in Myanmar: Between Feminism and Ethnopolitics (Routledge, 2019) and Sovereignty Revisited: The Basque Case (Routledge, 2017, co-edited with Pedro Ibarra Güell). She is also the author of Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition. A Place Called Shangrila (Routledge, 2008) and On the Margins of Tibet: Cultural Survival on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier (University of Washington Press, 2005; 2015, with Monika P. Thowsen). She was the head of PRIOs Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Program from 2005 to 2011. From 2006 to 2018, she coordinated an institutional cooperation between PRIO and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in New Delhi. She currently leads the project e-Topia: China, India and Biometric Borders, funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN). She serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of International Development and Vice President of the Interdisciplinary Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA), and is also a member of the editorial board of the European Bulletin of Himalayan Research (EBHR) and Alternatives: Global, Local, Political.
Journal Article in International Studies Perspectives
PRIO Policy Brief
PRIO Policy Brief
Book Chapter in Lives in Peace Research: the Oslo Stories
Edited Volume
Book Chapter in Food Governance in India Rights, Security and Challenges in the Global Sphere
Journal Article in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
Journal Article in Journal of International Development
Edited Volume
Book Chapter in Women, Peace and Security in Myanmar: Between Feminism and Ethnopolitics
MIT-WPU/PRIO Conference
MIT-WPU in Pune, India, 1–2 November 2023
CALL FOR PAPERS
The project will examine the use of smartphone apps, mass notifications via SMS and messaging on social media platforms, in efforts to alert the public and respond to emergencies.
The new open access
book Lives
in Peace Research: The Oslo Stories explains how PRIO, the world's
oldest independent peace research institute, was founded and how it survived
through crises.
The project will investigate the current crisis of statelessness affecting millions of people in the Bengali borderlands, including the Rohingya population of Myanmar and Bengali Muslims in the Northeast Indian state of Assam.
PRIO Research Professor Åshild Kolås has been appointed Vice President of the ISA Interdisciplinary Studies Section (IDSS). This was announced in the May Newsletter of IDSS.
Her key task at the outset is to work with the new section President, Stephen J. Rosow, to enhance the social media and web presence of the section.
Congratulations to Åshild Kolås!
The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) invites applications for a three-year, full-time research position as a Doctoral Researcher. The position is financed as a part of a grant from the Research Council of Norway to PRIO for a project on “e-Topia: China India and Biometric Borders” led by PRIO Research Professor Åshild Kolås.
How is e-governance and the Internet of Things (IoT) changing the everyday lives of the people of India and China, and how are these multifaceted changes affecting international relations?
Congratulations to Åshild Kolås, who will lead the project e-Topia: China, India and Biometric Borders, which has now received 4-year funding from the Foreign Policy programme of the Research Council of Norway. Congratulations also to project participant Mareile Kaufmann, as well as partners in Asia; Centre for Internet and Society, Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development, Hezhou University and Digital Asia Hub.
The book describes women’s efforts as agents for change in Myanmar and examines the potential of the peace process as an opportunity for women’s empowerment.
This new GPS Policy Brief on women’s participation in the Myanmar peace process asks:
PRIO researchers have been prolific contributors to the field of humanitarian studies in 2018. The contributions are mainly in the field of humanitarian technology and refugee management.