The ampersand has long been at the heart of William & Mary’s identity, symbolizing strength and versatility gained through interwoven disciplines, perspectives and ideas. A new membership in a collaborative organization will facilitate interdisciplinary opportunities for the W&M community to aid in tackling some of the most pressing global challenges.

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 William & Mary President Katherine A. Rowe to endorse the university’s new membership.

The collaboration is one of several partnerships advanced by the Reves Center for International Studies to provide faculty and students with opportunities for hands-on learning and research that focuses on critical global issues. 

“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.

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.

Burchett, a Reves Faculty Fellow, 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 & Marine Sciences at VIMS, the  Global Research Institute (GRI), the Institute for Integrative Conservation (IIC) and the Religious Studies Department. 

The NWI seeks to evaluate environmental threats to Nepal’s water resources and empower conservation leaders to advance community-based efforts to protect water resources and promote sustainable livelihoods. 

IIC Lead Geospatial Scientist Sapana Lohani has been deeply involved in the NWI since its inception in 2019. Having experienced the benefits of multidisciplinary research first-hand, she spearheaded the initiative to join the HUC.

“We are looking for collaborators who are willing to work together for conservation purposes in Nepal,” she said. “The HUC is a very good platform for us to address conservation issues and broaden our impact by working with other willing entities, including academic institutions, conservation organizations and local communities.”

Lohani explained that the IIC seeks to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into conservation projects, as local people have in-depth, long-term knowledge about their own ecosystems. Conducting multidisciplinary research will enable W&M to contribute to conservation solutions led by Hindu Kush people, conserving the Himalayan ecosystems that benefit both the local and global communities.

“The main motive of this membership was collaboration with conservation in our minds and communities in our hearts,” said Lohani.

IIC Director of Research Erica Garroutte pointed out that involvement in the HUC expands opportunities for immersive field experiences for students.

“Research in the Himalayas gives students an incredible experience,” said Garroutte, “because not only do they get to interact with fellow W&M students and faculty who are guiding them through the research, but they also have opportunities to interact with other students from other universities, especially from the areas where the work is being done. There’s a multicultural exchange of knowledge.”

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.

Student research in the Himalayas

The IIC is currently working on several research projects in Nepal. 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.

“HUC membership allows us to figure out where there’s alignment internally, and then also to expand that collective impact externally,” said 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. In these groups, researchers from the Hindu Kush region and around the world collaborate on regional and transboundary projects, joint publications, sharing and dissemination.

“How valuable the HUC is going to be is directly related to how much we put into it,” said Burchett. “The best way for us to benefit from it is if we have faculty at the university that join some of the HUC’s thematic working groups and take advantage of what the consortium has to offer.”

Lohani noted that membership in the HUC yields opportunities for W&M to contribute to meaningful outcomes.

“I see HUC as a great resource for collaborative learning experiences from local communities, researchers and experts from the Himalayas,” said 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. We, as science nerds, cannot agree more that policy translations are the best outcomes of science and scientific research.”