Emily T.Yeh

  • Professor of Geography
  • 2024 Guggenheim Fellow
  • College of Arts and Sciences Professor of Distinction
  • Research: Nature/society Geography; Political Ecology; Cultural Politics; Development; Tibet; China
  • Faculty Affiliate: Center for Asian Studies, CNAIS, C3BC
  • Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, 2003
  • Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar, 2023-24
  • Past-president, American Association of Geographers (2021-22)
  • HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
  • ENVIRONMENT-SOCIETY
Address

Grad Students

Drolma Gadou

Letar Jia

Letar Jia

Emma Loizeaux

Tenzin Yangkey

Research Interests

My main research interests are on questions of power, political economy, and cultural politics in the nature-society relationship. Using primarily ethnographic methods, I have conducted research on natural resource conflicts, environmental history, development and landscape transformation, pastoralism, and emerging environmentalisms in Tibetan areas of China. In addition, I have also worked on several NSF-funded interdisciplinary, collaborative projects on putative causes of rangeland degradation and vulnerability to climate change on the Tibetan Plateau. I am also engaged in research on weather modification in the context of anthropogenic global heating, as well as the politics of decarbonization in Indonesia.

More Info

Despite living in Colorado and doing research in Tibet, I love the ocean and try to scuba dive when I get the chance. Fortunately, I also enjoy cyclingand camping. I am also a "professora" ofcapoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art, and mom of Osel and Seldron.

Recent Courses Taught

  • Fall 2026 GEOG 6402 Political Ecology
  • Spring 2026 GEOG 3022 Climate Politics and Policy
  • Spring 2024 GEOG 3022 Climate Politics and Policy
  • Spring 2024 GEOG5161 Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2023 GEOG5632 Development Geography
  • Spring 2023 GEOG 5161 Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2022 GEOG 6402 Political Ecology
  • Spring 2022 GEOG 5161 Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2021GEOG5652 Introduction to Social Theory
  • Spring 2021 GEOG 5161 Research Design in Human Geography
  • Fall 2020GEOG5632 Development Geography
  • Spring 2020GEOG5161 Research Design in Human Geography
  • Spring 2019GEOG3822 Geography of China
  • Fall 2019GEOG5632 Development Geography

Recent Publications

Emily T. Yeh. 2025. Global geographies of weather modification in an era of climate change.”Annals of the American Association of Geographers.

Emily T. Yehand Emma Loizeaux. 2024. “China at COP-27: CBDR, National Sovereignty, and Climate Justice”Climate and Development. 16(10) 907-917.

Yonten Nyima andEmily T. Yeh2023. "The construction of consent for high-altitude resettlement in Tibet.”The China Quarterly.254: 429-447.

Emily T. Yeh2022.“The making of natural infrastructure in China’s era of ecological civilization”The China Quarterly, 255: 611-627

Emily T. Yeh 2022. "The cultural politics of new Tibetan entrepreneurship in contemporary China: Valorization and the question of neoliberalism.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 47(1):139-152.

Emily T. Yehand Gaerrang.“Pests, keystone species, and hungry ghosts: The Gesar Epic and Human-pika relations on the Tibetan Plateau”cultural geographies. 28(3) 461-478