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Graduate �鶹��Ժ from Water Seminar (Geography 5100) “The politics of water” present together at CU WASH Symposium 2026

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:48:51 +0000

Graduate �鶹��Ժ from Water Seminar (Geography 5100) “The politics of water” present together at CU WASH Symposium 2026 Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:48

In Professor Truelove’s Fall 2025 graduate water seminar, GEOG 5100: The Politics of Water, students (Em Wright, Laine Sullivan, Anshul Sharma, Marc Sailer, Zach Schaad), spanning social, physical, and engineering sciences engaged with hydrosocial approaches to understand some of the world’s most pressing water challenges. During the course of the seminar, students from differing disciplines began reflecting on their own lived experiences of water as not simply being something tied to only the physical, infrastructural, or technical, but also the social, cultural, political, and economic – what social scientists often refer to as “socio-natural.” Further, students critically considered how one’s own disciplinary silo could often limit the ways we see, approach, know, and seek to address global water challenges. For example, dominant approaches to pervasive water problems often focus on improving water access and security through technocratic and engineering fixes that are widely viewed as apolitical. At the same time, academic analyses often view water problems through a singular disciplinary lens with limited success, which also simultaneously curbs the scope of how we approach water’s complex challenges. At the conclusion of the course, students had offered such a high degree of personal, professional, and disciplinary reflection on the need to adopt a transdisciplinary approach that recognizes water’s hydro-social nature that the entire class joined together with the aim to continue to work together despite the semester ending. On the last day of the semester, the class agreed to put transdisciplinary thinking into practice by working across students’ own disciplinary orientations and drawing on the collective learning from the semester to co-author and co-present a think piece on the possibilities and imperatives of interdisciplinary approaches to global water challenges.

As a result, the following semester the entire class met again regularly. This time it was not for credit, but to collaborate and be mentored by Professor Truelove in thinking through a framework for transdisciplinary approaches to water challenges and justice, presenting at the CU 2026 Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Symposium, as well as working on a co-authored article for publication. In the collective work of graduate students from Geography, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and the Mortensen Center for Global Engineering, the CU WASH Symposium presentation (pictured below) entailed the students and Professor Truelove sharing the stage to engage a predominately engineering audience on how transdisciplinary approaches could advance water justice. The group presented and answered audience questions for a total of 30 minutes. The presentation advocated for an approach that attends to 1) the “humanness” of water systems, 2) differing ways of knowing and valuing water, 3) expanding how we understand and engage the right to water, and 4) centering communities’ and indigenous experiences’ of water in pursuing climate justice in order to achieve greater water equity and justice globally.

The team is eagerly continuing the work into the summer through their co-authored think piece around similar themes.

From left to right: Em Wright, Anshul Sharma, Yaffa Truelove, Marc Sailer, Laine Sullivan, Zach Schaad

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Hayes Hart-Thompson Awarded Student Employee of the Year

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:42:04 +0000

Hayes Hart-Thompson Awarded Student Employee of the Year Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:42

Hayes Hart-Thompson is a master’s student studying Geography. Dr. Jessica Finlay (Assistant Professor in Geography) nominated Hayes for their roles as a teaching and research assistant. Across both positions, Hayes consistently exceeds expectations, through exceptional initiative, intellectual leadership and a deep commitment to equity, inclusion and collective success.

In the classroom, Hayes builds an inclusive environment where students feel seen, heard and intellectually challenged, especially in a course centered on power, privilege and urban inequality. During stressful or uncertain moments, Hayes proactively checked in with students and adjusted instructional approaches to keep the class grounded in trust and mutual respect. Hayes also made a lasting instructional contribution by designing and leading a three-week interactive capstone project that asked students to apply course concepts to a realistic urban planning scenario, setting a new standard for experiential, justice-oriented learning in the department.

Hayes strengthens departmental research by contributing novel ideas that improve project design, collaborative workflows and advance equity-centered research practices. As a leader, Hayes supports and mentors other students and elevates their peers through encouragement, constructive guidance, and deep collaboration.

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Do you ever join point data to census polygons or other spatial units containing contextual information? Alek Berg and colleagues have new insight.

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:37:16 +0000

Do you ever join point data to census polygons or other spatial units containing contextual information? Alek Berg and colleagues have new insight. Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/28/2026 - 09:37

Aleksander Berg is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography advised by Stefan Leyk. He has been a graduate research assistant since 2023 on a National Institute on Aging grant studying the midlife (aged 25-64) mortality crisis in the United States. A core question of this project is: does place matter? To answer this, Berg has, over the past three years helped develop a dataset of death records at scales as fine as the residence address for fifteen U.S. states, from 1990 to 2022, accounting for over 7 million decedents. These records are then connected to Census spatial units such as blocks containing important contextual information about populations, the economy, and neighborhoods.

A key problem emerged during the development of these data: a substantial number of these death records were implausibly or impossibly joined to census blocks that, for example, are unpopulated, a type of error termed overlay uncertainty. This discovery led to an analysis and recent publication in the peer reviewed journal Transactions in GIS.

The paper, entitled: “Why It's So Hard to Match Residence Addresses to Census Blocks—And How to Fix It” leverages a subset of the larger midlife mortality dataset across the six states of California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New Jersey. Berg and co-authors Myron Gutmann (CU Institute of Behavioral Science), Stefan Leyk (CU Department of Geography), and Hoeyun Kwon (Lehman College, City University of New York): (1) test how often records are joined to the implausible blocks, (2) reveal the systematic problems that may generate these mismatches, and (3) offer ways to fix this problem.

Figure 3 (from the cited manuscript). Chart of the percentage of midlife deaths in zero population blocks in each state per five-year time period from 1990-2022.

The study reveals that up to 4% of records are placed into blocks with no population (see Figure 3). Of those erroneously placed death records, around half of them end up in census blocks that make up interstitial spaces such as railroad rights-of-way and boulevards. Berg et al. finds that many of these misplacements are due to very slight errors in the geocoding process (that is matching address text to a point on Earth) that place these death records only a few meters outside of a populated census block. The authors end the manuscript by suggesting a series of corrective measures such as aggregating up to a coarser spatial unit such as a census tract or reallocating records into the nearest populated census block (see Figure 7).

Figure 7 (from the manuscript). Visualizing potential automated corrections for overlay uncertainty.

Overall, the results and discussion from this paper have important implications beyond the field of health geography due to the vast use of point data derived from addresses (e.g. crime and environmental hazards data) that need to be connected to population data from censuses. As geographers’ datasets become larger and more place specific, paying attention to how small errors are amplified at scale becomes ever more important.

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Four Geography Graduate �鶹��Ժ are Awarded the GRFP, Setting Campus Record!

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:41:36 +0000

Four Geography Graduate �鶹��Ժ are Awarded the GRFP, Setting Campus Record! Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 15:41

Four Geography graduate students were awarded the prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)! The National Science Foundation’s GRFP is to help ensure the quality, vitality, and strength of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. Since 1952, the program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing full-time research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including STEM education. NSF GRFP was established to recruit and support individuals who demonstrate the potential to make significant contributions in STEM, including STEM education.

Lauren Palermo’s proposal is titled "Mapping the Landslide Built-Up Interface: How Evolving Human Settlement Creates Exposure to Landslides across the U.S." Lauren is the lead author of the USGS National Landslide Damages and Losses open dataset.

Danielle’s research leverages global satellite data to map trends in wildland fire behavior. She is reimagining fundamental fire science by testing theoretical relationships at continental scales. By fusing multi-scale, multi-temporal observations, she aims to understand the connection between fire speed, intensity, duration, and the socio-ecological outcomes of extreme fire events.

Emily’s research investigates how rising temperatures are impacting forest recovery after wildfire in the Southern Rocky Mountains. With increasing fire activity in the US Mountain West and hotter, drier climatic conditions, her work aims to synthesize field and remotely sensed data on recovery over the last several decades. Particularly, she aims to understand potential areas vulnerable to non-recovery, such as trailing edge forests.

Nyika Campbell, is currently working with Dr. Sisimac Duchicela's Mountain Ecology and Biogeography Lab (Mt. Bio) investigating change in alpine plant communities throughout the Americas. Nyika will continue this work as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow with the Mt. Bio lab beginning a masters degree with the CU Geography department in the Fall of 2026. Nyika's work aims to develop a framework for understanding and predicting plant community change across continents by using cutting-edge statistical methods to link large-scale satellite datasets to existing field-based observations. Prior to her current position as a Lab Manager at CU Nyika served for four years as an ecology field crew leader with the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Southwest research stations of the U.S. Forest Service.

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Annika Hirmke Receives Wenner-Gren Fellowship for her Dissertation Research on Community Solar in Montana

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 18:03:34 +0000

Annika Hirmke Receives Wenner-Gren Fellowship for her Dissertation Research on Community Solar in Montana Gabriela Rocha Sales Wed, 04/15/2026 - 12:03

Annika is a PhD candidate in the doctoral program of Geography at CU Boulder working with Prof. Jill Harrison and Prof. Joe Bryan. Her dissertation project titled “Solar Possibilities: Community Solar Against Monopoly Power” investigates the promises of community solar in Montana where the renewable energy industry in Montana has picked up significant speed in recent years, but most projects built end up exporting energy and serving communities outside Montana. In this context, community solar promises accessibility and benefit to the communities in its direct vicinity and environmental organizers have increasingly pushed for these kinds of projects amidst escalating electricity costs, higher frequency of extreme weather disrupting the grid, and rising energy demand in the state.

The Wenner-Gren dissertation fieldwork grant funds research that advances anthropological knowledge. This prestigious grant will support Annika in conducting in-depth fieldwork for the remainder of the year, enabling her to build deeper community relationships, work with environmental organizers, and conduct research across the state and across several community solar sites. With the support of several other awards from CU and the Department of Geography (CARTSS, Beverly Sears, Dinaburg Memorial Fellowship, and the John Pitlick Field Research Award), Annika has already gotten started on this fieldwork and has learned a lot about the different community solar sites and statewide energy landscapes which the remaining research will build on.

The dissertation research includes an ethnographic study of three existing community solar projects and how these three sites fit into the larger energy landscape in Montana and beyond. While each of these sites are created by rural electric cooperatives (more directly governed by the membership they serve) and share the same basic structure of community solar, their experience and (re)imagination of energy and space differ in ways that shape the infrastructural problems they aim to solve and how they do so. 1) Fergus Electric Cooperative (Lewistown): In “cattle country” this project serves an agricultural region and former gold rush area struggling with changing economic conditions and billionaires driving up the price of land. Community solar offers a path to economic survival through saved costs and to promote the use of renewables when climate change threatens their way of life. 2) Beartooth Electric Cooperative (Red Lodge): Historically central to Montana’s coal economy, now a tourist hub with little affordable housing for the workers that sustain its economy. Here, community solar offers possibilities to both sustain the people living there and conserve the landscape that draws tourists. And 3) Blackfeet Community Solar Energy Project (Blackfeet Reservation): This project entails a solar farm as well as jobs and job training for the solar industry and related fields for Native youth. It aims to address the longstanding structural neglect of Native tribes by rebuilding community and ecological relations. This site brings in considerations of energy sovereignty, economic development of the tribe, and restoring tribal ecological relations. Together, the three project sites provide an opportunity to investigate both the convergences and divergences of community solar projects in Montana and their particular geographical and historical settings.

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Millie Spencer and Emma Tyrrell: New York Times Article "How Do You Measure Snow From Space? First, Climb a Mountain."

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:12:03 +0000

Millie Spencer and Emma Tyrrell: New York Times Article "How Do You Measure Snow From Space? First, Climb a Mountain." Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 03/24/2026 - 09:12

Article copied for archival purposes.

How Do You Measure Snow From Space? First, Climb a Mountain.

A new satellite could transform how water is studied worldwide. But to help unlock its capabilities, scientists first needed to take critical measurements on a mountaintop.

By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

Photographs and Video by Nina Riggio

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey and Nina Riggio reported from high in the Colorado Rockies alongside a team of scientists on skis.

March 24, 2026

At 4:30 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, three alpine scientists arose from fitful sleep in a chilly research lab in the Colorado mountains, 11,500 feet above sea level. They drank some grainy coffee, strapped into their skis and headed out into the moonlight, dragging a sled loaded with gear.

They had a satellite to meet.

The scientists were on an unusual mission. They needed to measure the depth of the snow at a particular mountaintop location just as a new satellite passed directly overhead. That satellite, equipped with powerful radar, has the potential to be the first one capable of estimating how much water is on the ground, in the form of fallen snow, from outer space.

It would be an extraordinary technological milestone, providing global data on snowpack, precipitation and how much water might be available to feed rivers and reservoirs downstream in spring and summer. But first, the satellite would need to be calibrated.

And one of the most accurate ways to do it is to be physically present on the mountain to measure the snow under the exact same conditions, and at the exact same time, that the satellite does. Other scientists are doing similar things around the world.

Precise timing matters. Snow changes quickly and the satellite passes over the same spot only once every 12 days.

So with hearts pounding from the thin alpine air the three skied out onto moonlit snow. Two of them towed the sled, equipped with a small portable radar that is capable of measuring the snow’s depth and density simply by dragging it back and forth across the mountainside.

“Only 4 centimeters deep here!” one of the scientists, Emma Tyrrell, called out. She was leading the project as part of her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. At the back of the sled, helping her pull it, was Arielle Koshkin, a postdoctoral researcher in the same lab, who made a note of the measurement.

For two hours, Ms. Tyrrell and Dr. Koshkin skied back and forth in precise zigzags across the slope of the ridgeline, pulling the radar with them and plunging a ruler into the snow every few feet. Somewhere, invisibly above them, the satellite charted its own path across the sky.

The satellite, known as NISAR, was launched last summer by National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Indian Space Research Organization. The satellite’s capabilities are the closest humans have come to measuring water content in snow across vast regions, from space, the holy grail of snow science.

The new technology comes at a critical time. As the world warms, snow is vanishing across many parts of the planet. That includes Western United States, which is currently undergoing a record snow drought. In states including Colorado and Utah, the snowpack is the lowest since comprehensive modern recording began, 40 years ago. That’s a problem because these states rely on snow melt for up to 80 percent of their water.

Snowpack, Ms. Tyrrell said, acts like a frozen water tower, storing and releasing water that then gets used by communities and farms downstream throughout the year. She paused to gesture across the mountain peaks, where the snow was visibly patchy and thin.

The area she was working, known as Niwot Ridge, would typically be blanketed in a thick layer of snow this time of year. The area is part of a watershed that provides a third of the water needed by the city of Boulder, which was visible that morning, some 25 miles away, as cluster of twinkling lights.

The warming world will doubtlessly transform Colorado, but because of the state’s high elevation there’s uncertainty about precisely how that might play out, Dr. Koshkin said, speaking as she helped Ms. Tyrrell adjust a GPS sensor on the top of the sled. Some precipitation might fall as rain instead of snow, but rain doesn’t remain stored on the mountainside to steadily provide meltwater later in the year. She also said the swings between good and bad snow years are likely to become more drastic.

The sun had started to rise, tinting the mountains scarlet. Several dozen yards away, Millie Spencer, a Ph.D. candidate in the same research group helping out on the day’s mission, was digging a snow pit with a shovel.

This old-school approach remains the gold standard for accurate data on snow. Even when working with modern technologies, like the sled radar, scientists often take analog measurements from snow pits at the same time.

Water managers still rely on long-term records from manual snow measurements to predict how much water to expect from snow each year, from which they create complex forecasting models that patch together different kinds of data. Perhaps most important of these is a large federally run network of snow-weighing sensors that take daily measurements across Western states.

But these sources capture only conditions at a single, isolated point. That’s a problem, because snow can vary significantly across even a short area. And as snow vanishes from the places it used to fall, scientists and water managers say these methods will become less reliable.

The new satellite has some important caveats. It can’t measure snow in densely forested areas, or if the snow becomes too wet. And the satellite’s radar doesn’t always strike Earth at an optimal angle for snow measurements.

The problem is that it wasn’t designed or intended to measure snow, said Jack Tarricone, a scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA. The original mission, first proposed more than two decades ago, was to monitor crops and a variety of other Earth systems like natural disasters, tectonic activity and glaciers.

While the new satellite may be no silver bullet, it’s the best chance scientists have had to measure snow on a wide scale. Researchers at universities and federal agencies alike said they had spent years anticipating the satellite and preparing for its launch.

Now, the clock is ticking. Satellites often stay up well past their intended life spans, but the snow-measuring radar on this one is planned to operate for only three years.

That’s one reason Ms. Tyrrell felt urgency to do these calibration measurements now. Other teams of scientists are also taking measurements at other locations around the world, using a variety of different techniques, to give the satellite the best chance of being accurately calibrated against differing locations and geographical conditions.

Some are flying helicopters and drones with laser scanning devices, other are using radars like Ms. Tyrrell. Each method has pros and cons, but for all its scientific benefits, dragging a sled is certainly hard and slow going.

After several hours, around 7:30 a.m., Ms. Tyrrell and Dr. Koshkin started wrapping up for the day. The satellite had moved on.

They dragged their radar sled back toward the mountainside lab while Ms. Spencer, still working on her snow pit, struggled to examine lumps of snow crystals with a magnifying glass. The task was made nearly impossible by the ribbons of sleet pelting her face.

Back at the shed, Ms. Tyrrell unzipped the cloth covering over the radar and spotted a problem. Snow had somehow gotten onto the device. Worse, one of its many wires had become unplugged.

But there was nothing to be done. It was probably fine, Dr. Koshkin reassured her. The device was made for snow, after all. And most likely the wire fell out as they hauled it indoors.

Next would come a harrowing 45-minute drive back down the mountain in an open-air vehicle with caterpillar treads. Fully checking her data would have to wait until she was back in Boulder. Either way, she said she intended to try again when the satellite comes back in a couple weeks, as long as the snow doesn’t melt in the meantime.

That’s just the nature of studying snow. “There’s only so much you can control,” she said. “We have to work with what we’ve got.”

Sachi Kitajima Mulkey covers climate and the environment for The Times.

A new satellite could transform how water is studied worldwide. But to help unlock its capabilities, scientists first needed to take critical measurements on a mountaintop.

By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey

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PhD candidate Millie Spencer featured in Denver Gazette article on Colorado Glaciers

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:49:14 +0000

PhD candidate Millie Spencer featured in Denver Gazette article on Colorado Glaciers Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:49

Science communication has long been a passion of mine, and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to share a bit of my work, my perspective on glacier retreat and its environmental and sociocultural impacts with Seth at the Denver Gazette. While we as hydrologists so often focus on the scientific impacts on glacier melt—be it streamflow reduction, habitat loss, sea level rise, or increasing temperatures—glacier disappearance can also impact a community's sense of place and identity. It was a pleasure to chat with Seth and share what I've learned about how those of us living downstream of glaciers are shaped by these stoic features on our landscape. Whether on family hikes or ski days in basins carved by long-gone glaciers or simply driving west from SEEC on Colorado Ave. and looking up at Arapaho glacier, part of our identity as Colorado residents is shaped by our proximity to ice of past and present. As I shared with Seth, there's a sense of grief and nostalgia that comes from knowing that glaciers we have the pleasure of visiting will soon disappear, and that future generations will only know the mark they left on our landscapes and memories.

Spencer (center) with fellow Geography PhD student Sydney Carr (left) after conducting drone flights over Arapaho glacier last summer.

Read the article here: https://www.denvergazette.com/2025/09/28/the-legacy-and-loss-of-colorados-once-mighty-glaciers/

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Anshul Rai Sharma: Navigating Housing Precarity in Bengaluru: Insights from Fieldwork

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:38:01 +0000

Anshul Rai Sharma: Navigating Housing Precarity in Bengaluru: Insights from Fieldwork Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:38

Anshul Rai Sharma is a PhD student in the Department of Geography advised by Yaffa Truelove. His research follows how people navigate precarious housing conditions in one of India's fastest-growing cities, Bengaluru.

Supported by the John Pitlick Fieldwork Grant, he conducted preliminary fieldwork in informal settlements and state-led resettlement sites of the city. His days were spent moving between resettlement colonies, informal settlements and city municipality offices, speaking with residents, activists, and bureaucrats.

What emerged is a complex landscape of housing, where stability exists on a spectrum, some households have ownership documents, others hold possession certificates, while many navigate daily life with no formal claims to their homes. This gradation of security shapes everything, from stable access to water to electricity connections, from children's school enrollment to families' long-term aspirations.

In a resettlement colony on Bengaluru's periphery, where concrete apartment blocks house displaced communities (Figure 1), residents shared how unstable water and electricity affected their lives, along with lack of ownership documents to their allotted housing units.

Figure 1: Among the resettlement sites of Bengaluru, with unstable water and electricity.

Young people in these settlements became key interlocutors (Figure 2), offering perspectives on how housing precarity, and its attendant exclusions, shapes everyday life, aspirations and educational and professional trajectories.

Figure 2: Interacting with young people in the settlements, sharing about research.

During festival celebrations (Figure 3), the vibrancy of community life stood out, in contrast to material deprivations, a reminder that these spaces are homes, not just research sites. This is a critical part of Anshul’s research, to present the informal settlements as living, agentive spaces as opposed to being passive victims of urbanisation. These gatherings, full of laughter and song, offered glimpses into the affective and creative dimensions of urban life that are often missed in ‘urban survival’ narratives.

Figure 3: Celebrating festivities in the settlements.

A key moment in the summer was his involvement in the “Bengaluru Waterscapes” workshop (Figure 4), a collaborative effort by local organizations and researchers to address the city’s mounting water crises. These discussions were important in understanding of how environmental stress intersects with questions of housing and social justice.

Figure 4: Workshop on Bengaluru's waterscapes, led by MOD for city organizations to find solutions to water issues in the city's informal settlements.

Emerging from these experiences is a nuanced understanding of Bengaluru’s expansive housing crisis. It is also a social crisis, since settlements are not static or homogenous, they exist on a spectrum of recognition which shaped by caste and religion. Caste, in particular, remains a decisive force in determining who can claim land, who receives services, and who remains excluded from the geography of the “world-class” city. Some of these emerging issues, and calls to address them were featured in Bengaluru’s local new outlet: https://citizenmatters.in/housing-electricity-sulikunte-residents-eviction-ejipura-neglect/

Anshul’s forthcoming research will build on these preliminary findings, combining ethnography, archival work, and collaborative documentation to understand the crisis of housing and social justice in India’s IT Hub city of Bengaluru.

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Ethan Carr Selected as Hindi-Kush-Himalaya-Arctic Climate Youth Champion

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 20:53:12 +0000

Ethan Carr Selected as Hindi-Kush-Himalaya-Arctic Climate Youth Champion Gabriela Rocha Sales Thu, 11/06/2025 - 13:53

Ethan Carr, Geography MA alum 2024 and current Geography Ph.D. student has been selected as one of 12 Climate Youth Champions at the inaugural cohort of the Hindu-Kush-Himalaya - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum. The Champions were chosen from 9 different countries. See full list of Champions. The goal of the Leadership Forum is to "establish an annual Youth Leadership Forum that promotes a new generation of mountain and polar youth climate leaders. The Forum will inform, empower, and support youth from the HKH and Arctic regions by giving them a platform to bring in their perspectives and voices, strengthen their leadership skills, build capacity, and promote intergenerational dialogue to help ensure more youth-focused climate decision-making processes on cryosphere and biodiversity."

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Phurwa Gurung to Join UBC Geography, Advancing Research on Indigenous Territorialities and Biodiversity Conservation

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 19:15:43 +0000

Phurwa Gurung to Join UBC Geography, Advancing Research on Indigenous Territorialities and Biodiversity Conservation Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 04/29/2025 - 13:15

Tashi Delek! My name is Phurwa Dondrub Gurung, a fifth-year doctoral student at the department. I also did an MA here. Over the years, I feel so grateful to have received rigorous training from and with outstanding teachers and peers in theories and methods relevant to the key areas of my focus: political ecology, critical development studies, and Indigenous geographies. I have benefited immensely from the dedicated support of my Committee and the unparalleled mentorship from my Advisor, who guided me in all aspects of graduate training: teaching, research, publishing, grant-writing, and the job market. I feel truly fortunate to have been part of the vibrant and supportive CU Boulder Geography community!

Based on nearly two years of ethnographic field research (2023-24) in Dolpo, Nepal, my home and research site, my PhD dissertation research develops a deep and critical understanding of how Himalayan lifeways interweave and fare with global biodiversity conservation efforts and national state-making projects. I focus on two key nonhuman agents, the caterpillar fungus and the snow leopard, to understand the intersections of global and national conservation governance with Indigenous territorialities and place-based governance. I examine how these nonhumans participate in coproducing the state, Dolpopa identity, and multispecies worlds in a context of profound socio-environmental transformations in the high Himalaya.

My research is grounded in participatory, visual, community-engaged, and Indigenous methodologies. To this end, I employed ethnography, documentary filmmaking, participatory mapping and painting, solicited journals, and a collaborative in-situ documentation of oral literature as the primary methods of knowing and being in good relation with my community. The dissertation fieldwork and the multimodal, community-engaged works have been supported by generous grants from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC IDRF), Wenner-Gren Foundation, Firebird Fellowship, National Geographic Society, American Philosophical Society, and the CU Office of Outreach and Engagement. I am currently working on my dissertation, which I plan to defend in August 2025.

I accepted a new position in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I will join in July 2025 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Indigenous Environmental Studies and Sciences. UBC is an ideal academic home for the kind of work I do, with its vibrant community of Indigenous scholars engaged in critical work on Indigenous issues, both locally and globally. In addition to teaching, I will continue expanding my community-engaged works I began during my PhD studies here. I am especially looking forward to the postproduction of a documentary film I shot during my field research and publishing a bilingual multimedia book of Dolpo folk songs.

I will also be affiliated with UBC’s Interdisciplinary Biodiversity Solutions Collaboratory, where I am eager to collaborate with scholars across the disciplines to develop policy-relevant solutions to biodiversity conservation that center Indigenous knowledge. I also look forward to joining and getting to know new colleagues in the Department of Geography, the Himalaya Program, and Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC. And of course, my family is excited to explore the beautiful mountains and waters of British Columbia!

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