Carole McGranahan, a specialist in the history and culture of Tibet and the Himalayan region, is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado. She is the author of Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War (Duke University Press, 2010). She is also co-editor, with Ann Laura Stoler and Peter C. Perdue of Imperial Formations (School of American Research Press, 2007), a volume that explores colonialism and empire outside of Europe. With Ann Armbrecht Forbes, she co-wrote the first report on development in Tibet: Developing Tibet?: A Survey of International Development Projects (Cultural Survival and the International Campaign for Tibet, 1992). Her current writing projects include a study of the Pangdatsang family, the leading Tibetan traders in the early 20th century, including a reconsideration of British empire via Tibet, and further works on the Tibetan resistance army. Her newest research focuses on concepts and practices of citizenship in the global Tibetan refugee diaspora.

The number one question she is asked about her work is how she got interested in Tibet. The short but true answer is that it all began during a semester in Nepal as a study abroad student in 1989. As part of her studies, she lived in the small Himalayan village of Marpha near which is a Tibetan refugee camp. When she returned home it was the stories of Tibet she learned from those refugees that had the biggest impact on her. Twenty years later, she is still learning from their stories and telling them and others for new audiences.