The interdisciplinary and innovative research design combined historical-philological methods by translating and analyzing a thus far largely untranslated corpus of Bhutanese, Tibetan, and British colonial documents with a theoretical framework from religious studies focusing on both identity and social differentiation along with the corresponding conceptual distinctions and resources understood as "epistemic structures" (Kleine and Wohlrab-Sahr 2021; Wohlrab-Sahr and Kleine 2021). More specifically, the researcher traced the fourfold and multidimensional relationship between religious-doctrinal identity, socio-cultural identity, identity policies, and nation-building, thereby enabling an in-depth understanding of the main critical juncture in Bhutanese nation-building within the context of trans-cultural (Bhutanese-Tibetan) and global history (East India Company/British Raj). This locates Bhutan, thus far marginalized, for the first time, more precisely within scholarly and public discourses.
The project also included fruitful archival research at the British Library and collaboration with the British Library Endangered Archives Programme team. The main objectives of this intersectional secondment were to gain further training in digital and physical archival work at one of the largest and most important research libraries and deepen research skills in Tibetan paleography and codicology. In return, as a two-way transfer of knowledge, the researcher analyzed and provided detailed information about the five extensive open-access digitized Bhutanese collections/projects of the British Library Endangered Archives Programme in their blog. Moreover, in an open-access project report as a project deliverable, the researcher introduced the content, structure, and research value of these collections and addressed the role of preservation of the endangered textual collections in the context of natural disasters and the climate crisis to researchers in the field of Tibetan and Bhutanese textual studies and interested readers globally. In addition, this was aimed at Bhutanese scholars and the Bhutanese people within Bhutan, as the digital British Library Endangered Archives Programme collections enable them to have their own literary textual cultural heritage, which is often located in very remote parts of the country, at their fingertips.
As an additional, unplanned research achievement and result, the researcher was able to identify, digitally save, and work with numerous and very diverse 18th- and 19th-century, English-language primary sources of the India Office Records and Private Papers of the British Library. This enables the researcher to analyze an additional colonial British perspective on the early entangled histories between Bhutan, Tibet, the East India Company, and the British Raj, which will significantly contribute to the impact of the monograph as the planned primary research output by now explicitly addressing colonial and post-colonial history. Moreover, being located at the British Library enabled the researcher to add three archival research days at the Bodleian Library and the Victoria & Albert Museum Art, Architecture, Photography, and Design Department to work on additional Bhutanese materials, which benefitted the research project.
The researcher has produced a monograph draft for internal review and feedback from the two supervisors.
