This is an international multidisciplinary project that invites the cooperation of scholars and students specializing on ethno­linguistic and development issues of the Amdo Qinghai region. The project is based at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and comprises currently a dozen members with varying backgrounds and goals.

There are also affiliated members based in the Amdo Qinghai region as well as in academic centres elsewhere. The project has received financial support from the Academy of Finland (project no. 210192, the years 2005-2008) and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Lettres (Societas Scientiarum Fennica).

Marja Peltomaa

Tiina Hyytiäinen

Mitra Härkönen

Anja Lahtinen

PhD., project leader and coordinator, professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki. Educated in Uralic and Altaic Studies in Finland, Hungary, and Japan, he is currently working on the grammatical description and areal typology of selected languages in the Amdo Qinghai region. He has previously worked on the ethnic and linguistic history and pre­history of Siberia, Manchuria, and Mongolia. He has been regularly visiting Amdo Qinghai since 1996. He is also affiliated with Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot.

M.A., doctoral student at the Department of World Cultures (East Asian Studies), University of Helsinki. With a background in South Asian and Tibetan Buddhist Studies as well as gender studies, she is currently working on a PhD thesis concerning Women and Religion in the Tibetan parts of Amdo Qinghai. She has completed two prolonged periods of field work in Amdo Qinghai (2006, 2007). Previously, she has also stayed with the Tibetan communities in India.

M.Soc.Sc., a doctoral student at the Department of Comparative Religion, University of Helsinki. With a background both in comparative religion and anthropology she is currently working on her Ph.D. thesis on the gender hierarchy and the status of nuns in the Tibetan monastic institution in Kham area of Qinghai. Thus far she has conducted one field trip to Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan in 2007. Previously, she has studied Tibetan nuns' monastic life in India.

Ph.D., MBA. Asian Studies, Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki. Her dissertation GOVERNANCE MATTERS: China’s Developing Western Region with a Focus on Qinghai Province (2010) is about politics, economic development and cultural diversity. The main theme is good governance. She first visited Qinghai in 2004 and since she has made several field visits to the region. She has also spent half a year at Peking University, Peking. Her post-doctoral research continues with the issue of governance in the context of China in Africa.

Lic. Phil., doctoral student at the Institute of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki. Educated in the Chinese language, East Asian Studies, as well as general linguistics, she is currently working on a PhD thesis concerning Semantic and Pragmatic Relations in Grammars, with a focus on the Sinitic and Bodic languages spoken in Amdo Qinghai. She first visited the region in 2002 and has done field work on the Sinitic idioms of Wutun and Linxia (Hezhou). In 2007, she spent a field season together with the fellow project member Erika Sandman at Linxia, Gansu.

M.A., doctoral student at the Department of World Cultures (East Asian Studies), University of Helsinki. With a background in East Asian Studies (Chinese and Mongol), she is working on a PhD thesis on the Traditional Handicraft of the Minhe Mangghuer in Qinghai. She visited the Mongolic-speaking Minhe Mangghuer in 2001 and 2002 and observed their handicraft traditions.

M.A., doctoral student at the Department of World Cultures (East Asian Studies), University of Helsinki. She has majored in East Asian Studies and general linguistics and is currently working on her doctoral thesis concerning the Morphosyntax of the Wutun Language, with a special focus on the theory of ‘creolization’. She made her first visit to Amdo Qinghai in 2002, and has subsequently been working with Wutun native speakers both in and outside of Wutun. She has also spent a year at Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot. In 2007, she spent a field season together with the fellow project member Marja Peltomaa at Linxia, Gansu.

M.A., an ethnomusicologist from the Department of Musicology, University of Helsinki. She wrote her M.A. thesis on Amdo dunglen lute music and has conducted a field trip in Qinghai and Gansu during the summer of 2005.