Ram Mayaji practicing purification care using his Mala. Chitwan district, 2018.Nepal Chepang Research Program

The Arch, with the support of the Laab-Uvsq (dir. Philippe Charlier) and the cultural foundation Museum Barbier-Mueller (dir. Laurence Mattet), will accompany Adrien Viel's research program on the Chepang du Nepal, scheduled from November 16 to December 8, 2025.

Conduct in social and visual anthropology, this research will study practices located at the crossroads of ecology, gender and ritual.It is an extension of her work on the Chepang, already broadcast through the book Les Chepang du Nepal (2023), the film 3 Chamans (2014, with Aurore Laurent) as well as numerous conferences and projections.

This mission will document both the trapping practices of the bat in the district of Chitwan, in connection with the mythological stories which give the chiropter a singular place in the imaginary Chepang, and the study of the shaman women of Dhading and Makwanpur, still too little documented. The survey will finally be extended to a Chepang population in the Gorkha district, so far unprecedented on the ethnographic level.