This three-day online certificate course delves into these and similar questions to study the multifaceted ways in which mountains spark the human imagination. It aims to introduce a variety of aspects that shape mountain life through experiential, literary, philosophical and visual perspectives. Taking the Western Himalayan terrain as its main area of focus, the course veers through numerous cultural texts from the 19th to the 21st centuries (memoirs, travelogues, paintings, architecture, songs and cinema) to shed light on the diversity of ways that have defined – and continue to define – the relationship between highlands and humanity.

Open for everyone over the age of 18 years to attend, the course will largely take place in the English language. Wherever Hindi or other Himalayan dialects are deployed, translation will be provided. The course will run for two hours every day (six hours in total), which will include opportunities for short exercises and discussion. No prior knowledge of mountain societies or relationship to mountain life is required. A curiosity towards any kind of landscape culture(s) would however lead to a richer engagement with the subject.

Skills Gained:

• An introductory perspective on the relationship between landscape and culture in the context of mountain life.
• An introductory perspective on the relationship between identity and imagination in the domain of mountain cultures, particularly through a focus on media and materiality.
• Diverse insights on treating mountains as both natural and cultural entities at one and the same time.
• An introductory knowledge of the various ways in which cultural texts portray and produce meaning in the context of mountains (from literature to architecture, and music to the visual arts).
• An introductory knowledge of indigenous, colonial and popular culture perspectives towards mountain life in the context of colonial and pre-colonial hill stations (case study: Himachal Pradesh).

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Siddharth Pandey is a writer, academic and artist from the Himalayas of north India, currently based in Delhi NCR. He is the 2025 Writer-in-Residence at the International Centre Goa, India. He has a PhD in English and Materiality Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK), where he was based as a Cambridge International and Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar from 2012-19. He has held numerous fellowships in art history, global history and travel cultures at Yale University (USA) the Paul Mellon Centre (UK) and the Ludwig Maximilian University (Germany). He was the only Asian contributor to the Tasmania based global arts project ‘Lost Rocks,’ that resulted in his first book Fossil – a geo-mythological-poetic exploration of the Himalayas and a finalist for the 2022 Banff Mountain Literature Awards (Canada), widely considered to be the most prestigious international recognitions for highland writing. His work on cultural history, art, ecology, literature, cinema and geohumanities have been published in a number of academic anthologies and journals. Pandey has also written extensively for South Asian media like The Tribune, The Hindu, The Pioneer, Live Wire, Outlook, Frontline, Scroll, The News International and others. As a landscape photographer and curator, his work has been commissioned by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), Durham’s Oriental Museum (UK), and the Gaiety Theatre (India). In 2016 and 2017, he served as the Final Panel Jury Member for the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Writing Competition, the world’s oldest and largest literary contest for school children. As a self-taught musician, he loves to compose tunes inspired by Pahari, classical and folk music on the keyboard and piano, that can be found on his Youtube Channel ‘Flow: Music by Siddharth Pandey’ and his Instagram page @shimlasiddharthpandey.