Anthropologist | Research Consultant | Visual Ethnographer 

PhD Candidate & Temporary Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

Master of Environmental Science, Yale University

https://anthropology.cornell.edu/austin-lord

My  research focuses on disaster and aftermath, questions of time and temporality, lived experiences of uncertainty, political ecologies of water and energy, infrastructural politics, the impacts of climate change and climate science, and the construction of environmental knowledge in the Himalayan region. My approach is informed by training in Anthropology, Critical Disaster Studies, Science & Technology Studies, and Political Ecology.

Currently, I am in the process of writing my  PhD dissertation, an ethnography of the afterlives of disaster in the Langtang Valley of Nepal – where a massive co-seismic avalanche occurred during the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake, killing over 300 people. Drawing from over five years of research and volunteer work, my work carefully examines the ways that Langtangpas conceptualize loss, recovery, uncertainty, resilience, memory, hope and futurity as they seek to rebuild their lives in the wake this unthinkable disaster.

My scholarship is guided by a commitment to multimodal and collaborative processes of knowledge production that includes photography, mapmaking, ethnographic filmmaking, and the community-engaged archival work of the Langtang Memory Project. My teaching focuses on disaster, climate change, political ecology, development, environmental justice, and the ways people cope with uncertainties amid crises and within their everyday lives.

This personal website showcases some of the my photographic work from the period 2006-2016 - I am currently working on updating and reconfiguring this site. For the time being, to find more information and links to my published scholarship, please see GoogleScholar, ResearchGate, or Academia.edu. Thank you for your interest in my work.