WILLIAMSBURG — A new membership in a collaborative organization will facilitate interdisciplinary opportunities for the William & Mary (W&M) community to aid in tackling some of the most pressing global challenges, the university announced.
The Himalayan University Consortium (HUC) of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is a multinational research network with the mission of making the Hindu Kush region of the Himalayas “greener, more inclusive and climate resilient.”
In an April HUC Steering Committee meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, Associate Professor of Religious Studies Patton Burchett presented a charter signed by W&M President Katherine A. Rowe to endorse the university’s new membership.
The collaboration is one of several partnerships the Reves Center for International Studies advanced to provide faculty and students with opportunities for hands-on learning and research focusing on critical global issues, according to a W&M News article.
“By joining the HUC, W&M accelerates access to these opportunities,” said Reves’ Executive Director Teresa Longo. “Our presence in the consortium underscores W&M values — curiosity and respect, for example — within the global context.”
Advantages of collaborative research
The HUC benefits both local communities and the global population while enhancing student experiences via multicultural exchanges.
To date, the consortium comprises 107 universities within the eight Hindu Kush Himalayan countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan as well as other regions in the world.
“The consortium works to strengthen connections between knowledge-generating and decision-making institutions, creating new opportunities for transdisciplinary and transboundary research collaboration and enhancing mountain-specific research,” Burchett wrote in an email to W&M News.
W&M’s membership will provide researchers from a wide array of disciplines with access to a broader network of collaborators and local knowledge within the Hindu Kush region.
Mutual benefits of HUC membership include faculty research contributions, student research opportunities and network building, the university said.
Burchett looks forward to HUC opportunities for both faculty and students within the interdisciplinary Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) program, in which he serves as an instructor, and throughout the wider W&M community.
“I’d love to see people in the sciences excited to work in the Himalayan region,” he said, “and I’d love for people who are already working in the region in other disciplines to be excited about how their research can integrate with the sciences — something I’ve been learning myself.”
W&M’s involvement in the HUC stems from the Nepal Water Initiative (NWI), a multidisciplinary research effort led by scientists and scholars from W&M’s Batten School of Coastal and Marine Sciences at VIMS, the Global Research Institute (GRI), the Institute for Integrative Conservation (IIC) and the Religious Studies Department, it said.
In their research, W&M students work side-by-side with students from academic institutions in the region, members of local communities and researchers from all over the world. They build relationships that both enhance their experience as students and build pathways to conservation careers.
The IIC is currently working on several research projects in Nepal, according to the university. For example, two students furthered the research of the Nepal Water Initiative this year, and the project will continue next year.
Additionally, over the summer, two students worked with a local partner to gain a better understanding of human-wildlife conflict in Nepal. The project focuses on how snow leopards, bears and other carnivores influence pastoralist communities. This research will continue in 2025, when students will compare strategies that have been implemented in the United States with approaches that are being considered in high-elevation areas of Nepal.
This semester, IIC researchers will also team up with W&M Assistant Professor of Kinesiology Julius Odhiambo for an interdisciplinary public health project in Nepal that evaluates the link between conservation and maternal health, according to William & Mary.
“HUC membership allows us to figure out where there’s alignment internally, and then also to expand that collective impact externally,” said IIC Director of Research Erica Garroutte. “And who doesn’t want to go to Nepal?”
The HUC is composed of thematic working groups, encompassing a wide range of conservation topics, it said. In these groups, researchers from the Hindu Kush region and around the world collaborate on regional and transboundary projects, joint publications, sharing and dissemination.
“I see HUC as a great resource for collaborative learning experiences from local communities, researchers and experts from the Himalayas,” said IIC Lead Geospatial Scientist Sapana Lohani. “We in W&M can contribute on policy formulation and/or policy translation. It can be in the form of student-exchange and/or faculty exchange but there is a lot of potential.”
Read the W&M News article in its entirety here.
