Shamo Thar

Shamo Thar is a third year Ph.D. student from eastern Tibet in China. Her main research interests are college access and equity issues for ethnic Tibetans under the era of Chinese higher education massification. Prior to coming to UMass, she founded a non-profit organization in western China which raised funds nationally and internationally to initiate education-related programs such as building schools, libraries, and scholarships in rural herding in Tibetan regions.

She was also a teacher at Qinghai Normal University in eastern Tibet for a few years and taught development studies there. While being a teacher, she secured funds from the United Board for Asian Higher Universities which she used to create small-scale grants for the students who then implemented various community-driven projects.

Shamo earned her Master’s degree at Brandeis University in international development focusing on economics of development. She worked in both non-profit organizations and university settings as manager, program developer, fund-raiser, and teacher in Boston, Washington D.C, Beijing, and Xining. In her spare time, she likes to write picture books for young children in Tibetan language.  She spoke about her goals for her doctoral program:

"With my Ph.D study, I plan to upgrade my skills in scientific research primarily understanding questions of college access and equity for under-researched groups such as Tibetans in Chinese education systems. After more than ten years of work in promoting quality education for Tibetan girls and youth in western China, my program at CIE/UMass allows me to transition and reflect upon past and look forward to meaningful ways of creating dialogues with larger audiences using data from solid research studies."   

 Her recent paper titled Tibetan Pastoralists and Schooling: Local Challenges in a Context of Educational Reform has been published as a book chapter in Tibetan Pastoralists and Development through Leipzig University press.