The Highland Institute is engaged in a wide spectrum of interdisciplinary research initiatives rooted in Highland Asia, with a focus on community-engaged methods and long-term fieldwork. These projects reflect our commitment to collaborative, critical, and decolonial research practices—addressing urgent questions around climate change, indigenous knowledge, mobility, healing, heritage, and urbanisation.
We work in close partnership with institutions across India and internationally, and many of our projects include early-career researchers, postgraduate trainees, and fellows.
The URBALTOUR project in Nagaland investigates the interplay between urbanization and tourism in South and Southeast Asia’s mountainous regions. Focusing on Kohima, Nagaland, the study explores the transformation of the city due to the surge in tourism, propelled by events like the Hornbill Festival. Supported by France’s National Agency for Research, the project delves into […]
The PluriMed Research Group is an interdisciplinary collective based at the Highland Institute, dedicated to advancing critical inquiry into medical pluralism, therapeutic ecologies, and the intersections of formal and informal health knowledge systems. Anchored in rigorous ethnographic research and grounded in the lived realities of communities across Highland Asia, the group serves as both a research hub
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Ekologos is a collaborative project funded by the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education, coordinated by UiT The Arctic University of Norway; the Institute of Marine Research, Norway; the State University of Campinas UNICAMP, Brazil; RV University, Bangalore; Doctors For You, Mumbai; and the Highland Institute, Nagaland. The project engages pedagogically with
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The Intersubjective Ecology Laboratory is dedicated to investigating ecological conditions from a phenomenological perspective. Founded on the premise that all living beings and systems are subjects – and that anthropogenic destabilization of the environment derives from the objectification of the other – the lab seeks to elucidate and augment more-than-human relationships that support ecosystemic well-being
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The Highland Institute is part of a research team conducting academic training and ethnographic research in areas along the Northeast India-Myanmar border centred on studying perceptions and impacts of climate change linked to natural resource use and environmental concerns within border communities. Customary land use will also be included as a topic. The MyCClimate project is a
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Canada-IDRC Myanmar Research Fellowships With funding from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, a research team will document traditional ecological knowledge and perceptions of climate change along the Myanmar-Nagaland border to facilitate the opening of channels for dialogue about climate justice and food security. Based at the Highland Institute (India), the team, comprising
