Phurwa Gurung Awarded Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship
A high-altitude seasonal encampment for caterpillar fungus harvest in Dolpo, Nepal.
Phurwa D Gurung, PhD Candidate in Geography, received the competitive Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship (SSRC IDRF) funded by the Mellon Foundation. Phurwa was selected from a total of 870 applicants from graduate students at 112 universities. This year's 60 awardees represent thirty-one universities and fourteen disciplines. The SSRC IDRF fellowship will fund a year-long ethnographic fieldwork in Dolpo, Northwest Nepal, for his dissertation research tentatively titled Reordering Highland Territories: State-building, indigeneity, and multispecies worldmaking. His dissertation takes caterpillar fungus as a lens to examine the ways in which state-led biodiversity conservation and resource extraction overlap and clash with Indigenous environmental governance in the Himalayas.
Caterpillar fungus aka yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). Both photos by Phurwa.