Monalisa Maharjan received her PhD in Art History in 2016 from the University of Évora, Portugal, where she was an Erasmus Mundus Fellow. Her thesis explores the entanglement of Tangible and Intangible Heritage in Kathmandu Valley, providing a case study of the Yenya Punhi festival and the role of ritual Newar associations (guthi) in the process. Since 2016 Monalisa has worked at the UNESCO Chair for Intangible Cultural Heritage and Traditional know-how at CIDEHUS (Centro Interdisciplinar de História, Culturas e Sociedades da Universidade de Évora) as a research fellow. She is also associated with international organizations such as ICOMOS and the Association of Critical Heritage Studies (ICH network co-coordinator). Her research interests are Intangible Cultural Heritage, indigenous knowledge, community participation, sustainability and UNESCO Conventions. She has worked on the research and documentation of inscriptions, for NHDP and its associated project ‘Anthropology of inscriptions’. She continues to support the project as a consultant.

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