Chiging Pilia

Pilia, an Indigenous person, was born and raised in the beautiful Ziro Valley, located in the mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. He became the first person from his Chiging clan to obtain an M.Sc. degree in Zoology. During his academic journey, he interned with the Wildlife Institute of India. He joined WWF Traffic-India as a consultant, where he conducted research on the illegal trafficking of red pandas in his home state. In 2021, Pilia joined the Nature Conservation Foundation, India, where he worked with Drs. Aparajita Datta and Sahil Nijhawan to undertake an interdisciplinary investigation into the Chinese pangolin distribution and its cultural associations with the Adi people in Arunachal Pradesh.

Currently, Pilia is pursuing a PhD at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent, in collaboration with the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London. His doctoral research is supported by the Wildlife Conservation Network Graduate Scholarship and the Wildlife Conservation Society's C.V. Starr Tiger Conservation Fellowship.  

Impacts of changing sociocultural terrain on human-nonhuman relationship and hunting sustainability in the Indigenous Peoples of Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Pilia’s interest goes beyond academic curiosity; it is a deep investigation of his own future, the future of his people, and the shared future of all nonhumans that lives his/their land in this rapidly changing world. Pilia and his people witness their lands and biocultural diversity undergoing unprecedented change, driven by socio-cultural shifts, the expansion of a market-based economy, and large-scale infrastructure development. Among these changes, religious conversions are a significant factor, challenging and reshaping traditional relationships with the nonhuman world in an ongoing contestation. He seeks to understand how the shift from traditional animist beliefs to other religions has impacted his people’s cosmology and the human-animal-spirit relationships. One aspect of this relationship is expressed through hunting practices. He investigates how sustainable the hunting practices of newly converted Indigenous people are and how changing human-nonhuman relationships influence these practices. Additionally, he explores the implications for nonhuman animals as the meanings and rituals centered around them evolve. What happens to these animals when their roles in cultural practices and cosmological frameworks are redefined?

Chiging's supervisors are :-

Dr. Daniel Ingram
Dr. Mahesh Poudyal
Dr. Sahil Nijhawan (Institute of Zoology, ZSL)