Dr Alice Millington

I have joined St. John’s as a Social Anthropologist, after having spent the majority of my training in the Geography Department of the University of Cambridge, where I received both my BA and PhD. I also pursued my MA in South Asian Area Studies from SOAS, University of London. I resided in Nepal for almost two years during my PhD, and built a linguistic and interpersonal base both in Kathmandu, and in my field sites in north-eastern Nepal.

My work has had applications beyond academia, particularly in the conservation sector. I have contributed to a major intergovernmental biodiversity assessment, the IBPES Values Assessment (2022) and undertaken GIS mapping projects for UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site inscription. During a hiatus in my studies, I worked at the Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) in Cambridge. I have also contributed to several journalistic outlets, covering indigenous environmental issues in Nepal.

Teaching

During my time at Oxford, I intend to develop a postgraduate training course, focused on developing skills and safeguards for fieldwork in ‘remote areas’ – physically challenging and geographically isolated regions – which will be primarily targeted at research students enrolled in relevant Geography, Anthropology and Area Studies courses. I may also undertake teaching in areas of the undergraduate Anthropology and Geography programmes that align with my expertise.

Anthropologically, my area of regional expertise is the Eastern Himalayas, and I have conducted substantial ethnographic fieldwork in Taplejung District, eastern Nepal. I have worked largely in ethnically Tibetan villages at the Himalayan borderlands. Broadly, my prior research uncovered connections between rapid climatic change and human perceptions of time in eastern Nepal. My ethnography suggested that climate change was predominantly characterised as a ‘time change’, rather than as a shift in weather patterns. I am particularly interested in how this intersects with local religious beliefs, especially the prophecies of the Nyingma Buddhist canon, which foretells the advent of a ‘degenerate era’. I also work on the challenges of yak pastoralism under changing environmental and political conditions, which will be a key focus of my postdoctoral research. Finally, I am also interested in Indigenous astronomy, Tibetan astrology, and the broader anthropology of time.

Publications

Millington, A. (2024). A Crisis of ‘Stranded Assets’: Covid-19 Border Closures and Climate Change in a Yak-herding Community in Eastern Nepal. Inner Asia, 26 (1), 58-84. https://brill.com/view/journals/inas/26/1/article-p58_4.xml?ebody=abstract%2Fexcerpt

Millington, A. (2024). Himalayan Buddhism as Human Geological Agency: Rethinking the Novelty of” the Anthropocene”. Journal of Global Buddhism, 25 (1), 75-92. https://doi.org/10.26034/lu.jgb.2024.381

Chaplin-Kramer, R., Neugarten, R.A., Gonzalez-Jimenez, D., Ahmadia, G., Baird, T.D., Crane, N., Delgoulet, E., Eyster, H.N., Kurashima, N., Llopis, J.C., Millington, A. et al., (2023). Transformation for inclusive conservation: evidence on values, decisions, and impacts in protected areas. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 64, p.101347. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1877343523000945

Baker, H., Concannon, S., Meller, M., Cohen, K., Millington, A., Ward, S., & So, E. (2022). COVID-19 and science advice on the ‘Grand Stage’: the metadata and linguistic choices in a scientific advisory groups’ meeting minutes. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 1-16. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01403-1

Awards and Distinctions

Winner of Britain – Nepal Academic Council PhD Dissertation Prize (2024).

Economic and Social Research Council Interdisciplinary Studentship (2019 – 2024)

Foundation Scholarship, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (2018)

William Vaughan Lewis Prize, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge (2018)