About

Lauren G. Leve is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her scholarly interests lie at the intersection of religion, culture, and changing forms of life in contemporary Nepal and South Asia. Trained as an anthropologist, she studies how religious practices and subjectivities are intertwined with broader political, economic, and social trends, particularly those associated with neoliberal globalization. Her research explores how human agents use religion to reflect on and shape their understanding of the world. Leve's first book, The Buddhist Art of Living in Nepal: Ethical Practice and Religious Reform, examines the twentieth-century revival of Theravada Buddhism in Nepal, situating this 'Theravada turn' within historical developments such as battles over the Hindu state, economic liberalization, and democratic reforms. She analyzes how these changes foster new forms of personhood and ethical self-cultivation through modernist Buddhist practices, especially lay vipassana meditation, and how these reflect and influence global processes. Currently, she is working on two projects: one on the globalization of Buddhist meditation through the Goenka tradition, addressing themes of capitalism, culture, mindfulness, and modernist Buddhism's universal claims; and another following rural women over 25 years through development projects, a Maoist insurrection, and their conversations about Christianity, focusing on gendered violence, aspirations, and religious relations. In addition to her academic research, Leve has consulted on international development studies related to women’s literacy and empowerment and provides expert witness services in US courts. At UNC, she teaches courses on ethnographic methodologies, Theravada Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and related topics, reflecting her research interests.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Geography
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Human–computer interaction
• Geology
• Archaeology
• Geometry
• Geomorphology
• Philosophy
• Art
• Aesthetics
• Physical geography
• Visual arts
• Epistemology
• Environmental science

Selected publications

• Extreme seasonal water-level changes and hydraulic modeling of deep, high-altitude, glacial-carved, Himalayan lakes

  Research Square · 2023-03-21

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Himalayan lakes represent critical water resources, culturally important wa- terbodies, and potential hazards. Some of these experience dramatic water- level changes, responding to seasonal monsoon rains and post-monsoonal drain- ing. We present in situ observations of extreme (>12 meter) seasonal water- level changes in a 50-m deep lateral-moraine-dammed lake (lacking surface outflow), during a 16-month period, equivalent to a 5x106 m3 volume change annually. Data were used to construct a hydraulic model, which was used to estimate hydraulic conductivities of the moraine soils damming the lake. A higher moraine-dammed lake exhibits similar fluctuations. These lake levels lie above the nearby glacier surface. Several other lakes in the region exhibit minor seasonal water-level fluctuations, but each discharge through a surface outflow and lie below the glacier surface elevation. These results indicate that adjacent lakes may exhibit very different filling/draining dynamics and have different fates in the next few decades, based on presence/absence of surface outflows and elevation relative to retreating glaciers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Extreme seasonal water-level changes and hydraulic modeling of deep, high-altitude, glacial-carved, Himalayan lakes

  Scientific Reports · 2023 · 4 citations

  • Geology
  • Physical geography
  • Environmental science

  Abstract Himalayan lakes represent critical water resources, culturally important waterbodies, and potential hazards. Some of these lakes experience dramatic water-level changes, responding to seasonal monsoon rains and post-monsoonal draining. To address the paucity of direct observations of hydrology in retreating mountain glacial systems, we describe a field program in a series of high altitude lakes in Sagarmatha National Park, adjacent to Ngozumba, the largest glacier in Nepal. In situ observations find extreme (&gt;12 m) seasonal water-level changes in a 60-m deep lateral-moraine-dammed lake (lacking surface outflow), during a 16-month period, equivalent to a 5 $$\times 10^6$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> <mml:mn>6</mml:mn> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> m $$^3$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow/> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:msup> </mml:math> volume change annually. The water column thermal structure was also monitored over the same period. A hydraulic model is constructed, validated against observed water levels, and used to estimate hydraulic conductivities of the moraine soils damming the lake and improves our understanding of this complex hydrological system. Our findings indicate that lake level compared to the damming glacier surface height is the key criterion for large lake fluctuations, while lakes lying below the glacier surface, regulated by surface outflow, possess only minor seasonal water-level fluctuations. Thus, lakes adjacent to glaciers may exhibit very different filling/draining dynamics based on presence/absence of surface outflows and elevation relative to retreating glaciers, and consequently may have very different fates in the next few decades as the climate warms.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Visualizing Himalayan Buddhist Sacred Sites in 3D/VR

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science

  Abstract Much has been written about the value of spatial approaches to the study of religion and about the importance of attending to material objects that locate religion for culturally positioned practitioners in specific places and times. This chapter explores the use of digital space for religious studies pedagogy and as the grounds for community-engaged scholarship. It describes a project, begun in 2018, of creating 360-degree videos and 3D models of Buddhist sacred sites and objects in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal that could be accessed online and also become the basis for immersive experiences using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) devices. In partnership with diverse Himalayan Buddhist stakeholders to create new representations, the project goal is to use technology to challenge misperceptions of Buddhism that reproduce colonial knowledge hierarchies by identifying Buddhism with philosophy and texts, revealing it instead as an embodied, emplaced, dynamic material tradition.

  PublisherDOI

• Interlocutors

  Fieldwork in Religion · 2022-05-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A significant challenge for ethnographers since the 1980s has been how to name their relationships to the people with whom and about whom they produce knowledge. Following critiques of how the term “informant” encodes and reproduces colonial power dynamics, ethnographers have sought alternative language to describe fieldwork-based relations. This article examines one of the most commonly used terms—“interlocutor”—and considers the implications of adopting a word that emphasizes voice and speech over embodied participation. “Interlocutor” is appealing to contemporary scholars because it signals respect for the people we work with using a vocabulary that reflects modern secular ideologies. Yet, research that advances decolonial goals may depend less on transforming styles of ethnographic representation than on opening the ethnographer and ethnographic inquiry to other ways of knowing and being, via embodied experience and relational practices. When ethnographers of religion engage the people we work with primarily as voices we set ourselves up for misunderstanding and miss opportunities to trouble imperial structures of knowledge.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Chapter 2. Failed Development and Rural Revolution in Nepal: Rethinking Subaltern Consciousness and Women’s Empowerment

  2020-09-30

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Women’s Empowerment and Rural Revolution

  2017-08-18

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  On 13 February 1996 a homemade bomb exploded at the Agricultural Development Bank in rural Gorkha District. The blast damaged the building and its furniture; more importantly, the attack destroyed all records of the bank's agricultural loans. The insurrection took urban Nepal by surprise. Less than six years later, however, it had penetrated almost all of Nepal's 75 districts, and 70 per cent of the countryside was under Maoist control by 2006. The speed and intensity with which the insurgency took hold has inspired abundant literature on rural life and the roots of the rebellion. Throughout the conflict, a major proponent of the failed development hypothesis was the United States Agency for International Development. In aiming for the increasing triumph of individual autonomy and embracing freedom from all coercive control, the conscienticization model also misrecognizes Nepali women's beliefs and motivations.

  PublisherDOI

• The Buddhist Art of Living in Nepal

  2016-08-05 · 4 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Theravada Buddhism has experienced a powerful and far-reaching revival in modern Nepal, especially among the Newar Buddhist laity, many of whom are reorganizing their lives according to its precepts, practices and ideals. This book documents these far-reaching social and personal transformations and links them to political, economic and cultural shifts associated with late modernity, and especially neoliberal globalization. Nepal has changed radically over the last century, particularly since the introduction of liberal democracy and an open-market economy in 1990. The rise of lay vipassana meditation has also dramatically impacted the Buddhist landscape. Drawing on recently revived understandings of ethics as embodied practices of self-formation, the author argues that the Theravada turn is best understood as an ethical movement that offers practitioners ways of engaging, and models for living in, a rapidly changing world. The book takes readers into the Buddhist reform from the perspectives of its diverse practitioners, detailing devotees' ritual and meditative practices, their often conflicted relations to Vajrayana Buddhism and Newar civil society, their struggles over identity in a formerly Hindu nation-state, and the political, cultural, institutional and moral reorientations that becoming a "pure Buddhist"—as Theravada devotees understand themselves—entails. Based on more than 20 years of anthropological fieldwork, this book is an important contribution to scholarly debates over modern Buddhism, ethical practices, and the anthropology of religion. It is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Religion, Anthropology, Buddhism and Philosophy.

  PublisherDOI

• The Buddhist Art of Living in Nepal: Ethical Practice and Religious Reform

  2016-08-05 · 9 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  1. Introduction : seeing things as they are -- 2. "A garden of every kind of people" : Newar Buddhists in Hindu Nepal -- 3. Buddhist modernism and the revival of "pure Buddhism" -- 4. What makes a Theravada Buddhist? -- 5. Becoming "pure Buddhist" (pt. 1) : practices of personhood -- 6. Becoming "pure Buddhist" (pt. 2) : vipassana meditation and the Theravada care of the self -- 7. The best dharma for today : post-Protestant Buddhism in neoliberal Nepal -- 8. Conclusion : the Buddhist art of living, in Nepal and elsewhere.

  PublisherDOI

• Failed Development and Rural Revolution in Nepal

  2014-01-01 · 9 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Failed Development and Rural Revolution in Nepal:

  2014-03-20

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Roberto Camassa

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  5 shared

• Mark Goodale

  University of Lausanne

  5 shared

• Harvey Seim

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  5 shared

• Bradley Charles Erickson

  University of North Carolina Health Care

  4 shared

• Richard M. McLaughlin

  3 shared

• Subodh Sharma

  Kathmandu University

  3 shared

• Emily Eidam

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  3 shared

• Sally Engle Merry

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• UNC FIRE grant (2016)
• Carolina Women’s Center, Faculty Fellow, 2013-14
• Institute for Arts and Humanities, Faculty Fellow 2007
• Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Research Award, 2004
• Program in Agrarian Studies, Yale University, Program Fellow…