I am a socio-cultural and environmental anthropologist, Vanier Scholar, UBC Public Scholar, and P.E.O. Scholar. My primary research explores how lived experiences of the Cameron Peak Fire and its aftermath in Colorado shape people’s understanding of the landscape and future disasters. I have also recently written about linguistic mobility, resettlement patterns, and complex language practices of marginalized language communities in New York City, and the intersection of technology and development in Nepal.

I am a former GIS Analyst, educator, curriculum developer, wildland firefighter, and currently volunteer on a rural fire department. I have both participated in and helped organize multiple citizen science and humanitarian mapping and information gathering initiatives in response to disasters and humanitarian crises in Colorado, Nepal, Puerto Rico, and Europe.

Over the past two decades, I have been involved in multiple ethnographic research projects in Nepal: exploring the relationship between landscape and language among Kaike speakers in Dolpa; traveling with the street theater group Sarwanam to understand their role promoting social change; and evaluating the efficacy of a women’s empowerment program across the Terai for PACT Nepal. I have also conducted research on socio-cultural manifestations of the supernatural in southern Italy with the Graduate Research Centre on Europe and explored the association between food and family relationships across three generations of one Italian-American family.

PhD Supervisor: Dr. Mark Turin

Committee Members: Dr. Tracey Heatherington, Dr. Andrew Martindale, Dr. Sara Shneiderman

Research Key Words: Disaster, wildfire, post-wildfire flooding, climate change, language, mobility, identity, borders, space and place, urban anthropology, mapping, GIS, socioecological resilience, infrastructures, technologies

Research Summary:

Convergence and Conflagration: Wildfires and Shifting Landscapes in the Cache la Poudre Canyon, Colorado
Using the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire in Colorado as a focal point, my dissertation research engages local perspectives and experiences to understand how people make sense of geographies of risk compounded by intersecting climatic, ecological, geomorphic, and anthropogenic processes across the landscapes in which they live. I am interested in unsettling the chronologies of disaster to understand periods of disruption and loss in the context of the social-ecological processes that both precede and follow wildfires and continue to impact both people and the environment long after the fire has been extinguished.

Recent Research Projects

Ecologies of Harm: Mapping Contexts of Vulnerability in the Time of COVID-19
With Principal Investigator Dr. Leslie Robertson and colleague Stephen Chignell, we created a collaborative spatial archive to document locally defined conditions of vulnerability in order to generate opportunities for knowledge-sharing, dialogues, and solutions-based engagements. We were also interested in documenting experiences of extreme weather and how they intersect with and are exacerbated by conditions of vulnerability related to COVID-19. Read more about the project, view the spatial archive, and find out how to contribute at Ecologies of Harm. You can also submit your experiences to the Extreme Weather Survey.

Language Mapping
As part of a collaborative team represented by university and community researchers from UBC, Dartmouth, NYC, and the Endangered Language Alliance, we  explore the complexities of mapping urban linguistic diversity in NYC and the impact of COVID-19 on marginalized language communities. Please see the Languages of New York City interactive map of linguistic diversity.

2023. Daurio, Maya. “Temporal Recalibrations: Learning to See in the Liminal Spaces of Post-Wildfire Landscapes.” Engagement: A Blog Published by The Anthropology And Environment Society.

2022. Daurio, Maya. “Review of The Power of Maps and The Politics of Borders”. Cartographic Perspectives 99.

2022. Daurio, Maya. “Review of Anticipating Future Environments: Climate Change, Adaptive Restoration, and the Columbia River Basin by Shana Lee Hirsch”. Environment and Society 13 (1).

2022. Daurio, Maya and Mark Turin. “Teaching Indigenous Language Revitalization over Zoom”. KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 6 (1): 1-11.

2021. Budha, Jag Bahadur, Maya Daurio, and Mark Turin. “Tichurong (Nepal) – Language Snapshot”. Language Documentation and Description 20: 189-197.

2021. Perlin, Ross, Daniel Kaufman, Mark Turin, Maya Daurio, Sienna Craig, and Jason Lampel. “Mapping Urban Linguistic Diversity in New York City: Motives, Methods, Tools, and Outcomes”. Language Documentation & Conservation 15 (October): 458–90.

2021. Craig, Sienna, Nawang Gurung, Ross Perlin, Daniel Kaufman, Maya Daurio, and Mark Turin. “Global Pandemic, Translocal Medicine: The COVID-19 Diaries of a Tibetan Physician in New York City.” Asian Medicine 16: 55-88.

2021. Craig, Sienna R., Nawang Tsering Gurung, Maya Daurio, Daniel Kaufmann, and Mark Turin. “Negotiating Invisibility at the Epicenter: Himalayan New Yorkers Confront Covid-19.” Items. June 10.

2021. Perlin, Ross, Nawang Gurung, Sienna Craig, Maya Daurio, Daniel Kaufman, and Mark Turin. “Who Will Care for the Care Worker? The COVID-19 Diaries of a Sherpa Nurse in New York City.” Issues Journal 4 (1).

2021. Craig, Sienna, Maya Daurio, Daniel Kaufman, Ross Perlin, and Mark Turin. “The Unequal Effects of COVID-19 on Multilingual Immigrant Communities.” The Globe and Mail, March 24.

2020. Gurung, Nawang, Ross Perlin, Mark Turin, Sienna R. Craig, Maya Daurio, and Daniel Kaufman. “Himalayan New Yorkers Tell Stories of COVID-19.” The Nepali Times, June 6..

2020. Daurio, Maya, Sienna R. Craig, Daniel Kaufman, Ross Perlin, and Mark Turin. “Subversive Maps: How Digital Language Mapping Can Support Biocultural Diversity—and Help Track a Pandemic.” Langscape Magazine Vol. 9, Summer/Winter 2020, “The Other Extinction Rebellion: Countering the Loss of Biocultural Diversity.”.

2020. Maya Daurio and Mark Turin. “‘Langscapes’ and Language Borders: Linguistic Boundary-Making in Northern South Asia.” Eurasia Border Review 10 (1), 21-42.

2020. Maya Daurio. “Review of Trans-Himalayan Traders Transformed: Return to Tarang.” Himalaya 39 (2).

2019. Maya Daurio. “The Significance of Place in Ethnolinguistic Vitality: Spatial Variations Across the Kaike-Speaking Diaspora Of Nepal.” In The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya, edited by Selma K. Sonntag and Mark Turin (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers), pages 109-136.

2012. Maya Daurio. “The Fairy Language: Language Maintenance and Social-Ecological Resilience Among the Tarali of Tichurong, Nepal.” Himalaya 31 (1 & 2): 7-21.

2007. Maya Daurio. “Review of Beyond the Myth of Eco-Crisis: Local Responses to Pressure on Land in Nepal.” The Organization: A Practicing Manager’s Quarterly, July-September 10 (3).

P.E.O. Scholar Award, 2024
Faculty of Arts Graduate Award, 2024
Dean of Arts Graduate Student Research Award, 2023
Public Scholars Climate Emergency Funding, 2022
Vanier Scholarship, 2021
Esri Canada GIS Scholarship (co-recipient with Stephen Chignell), 2021
President’s Academic Excellence Initiative PhD Award, UBC, 2021-2023
Public Scholars Award, UBC, 2020
Four Year Doctoral Fellowship, UBC, 2019-2023

Upper Poudre Canyon Post-Fire Community Hub: A Centralized Location for Information on Wildfire, Post-Fire Flooding, and Recovery (March 13, 2024).

Climate Emergency Fund: Public Scholar Maya Daurio’s Community-Centred Wildfire Resilience Research (October 20, 2023).

Interview with Mankiran Aujla from Spice Radio about the wildfires in Southern BC (August 23, 2023).

Interview with Abigail Turner from CTV News Vancouver about the relationship between the 2003 and 2023 Kelowna fires (August 18, 2023).