Botao is a PhD student of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Yale University. His research interests lie in the intersection of environmental anthropology, historical geography, and borderland studies. Fascinated by the landscape and multicultural dynamics around the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, Botao is currently looking at the peasant livelihood transformation, social-spatial changes, and shifting human-environmental relationships through the lens of salt-grain trade (a critical component of the Tea-Horse Road) in the Sino-Tibetan frontier, with a particular attention to how transformation in a local sphere is tele-connected with extra-local or global forces.
Botao has a background in architecture and urban planning, where he developed an interest in mobilizing spaces as a means to understand society. He received a master’s in environmental science from the Yale School of the Environment in 2025 for a thesis investigating the decline of the traditional salt trade in Kham Tibet. Botao has served as a Yale Environmental Justice Fellow, a Fellow of the Himalayan University Consortium, and a Student Executive Committee Member of the Asian Geography Specialty Group at the American Association of Geographers. Apart from reading, writing, and academic colloquiums, he equally enjoys hiking, ball games, sketching and calligraphy.
Research Interests:
Political Economy and Ecology; Borderlands; Mountains; Modernity; Spatial Studies; Inter-Asia; Trans-Himalaya Region