We are delighted to announce that CSAS Director Anna Stirr PhD has been selected to receive this year’s Kalibhakta Pant International Folklore Prize.
The prize ceremony will take place in Boston this coming June.
PRESS RELEASE: Phalewas, Parbat, February 20, 2024. American singer Anna Stirr is to be awarded the Kalibhakta Pant International Folklore Prize 2024, established by the Kalibhakta-Krishna Pant Memorial Foundation.
The intent to award the prize to Anna was announced at a program held on the occasion of Kalibhakta Pant’s twenty-third remembrance day. With a Ph.D. on Nepali folk song / folk dohori, she has made up-to-date contributions to this folklore and culture’s international dissemination and promotion through her study, research, and publications on Nepali folklore and culture, and is currently Associate Professor and Director of the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Hawaii Manoa in the United States of America. For the past six years, the Kalibhakta-Krishna Pant Memorial Foundation Nepal has been awarding the Kalibhakta Pant International Folklore Prize for Nepali folklore. This prize provides a sum of Rs. 101,000 in Nepal or $1001 American Dollars abroad, plus an award certificate. Previous awardees include Satya Mohan Joshi (2019), Krishna Kandel (2020), Tulasi Diwas (2021), Professor Dr. Chuda Mani Bandhu (2022), and Kumar Basnet (2023); the singer Anna Stirr is the first foreigner to be awarded this prize. On the occasion of the remembrance day 2024, artists were honored and scholarships were distributed to students in various fields, according to the organization’s president Professor Dr. Parthiweshwor Prasad Timilsina.
The program was held in Parbat Phalewas, in the Foundation’s hall. At the program, Kalibhakta’s third son Govinda Prasad Pant and fifth son Shobha Bhakta presented the established scholarships to students of Kurgha, Limithana, and Khalle schools.