The Nilgiris Field Learning Center (NFLC) is a transdisciplinary joint program of the Keystone Foundation, India, and Cornell, now in its ninth year. Undergraduates from across the university and young people from the Adivasi communities that Keystone works with, live, study, and conduct community-based research each spring in Kotagiri, India. There are other ongoing collaborations, which will be briefly described by three Cornell faculty who are involved. However, everything ended abruptly with the pandemic, whose effects are amplified in the regions where NFLC research teams are located. The second half of the presentation will focus on the effects that the pandemic has had on the Keystone Foundation’s work, as well as on the NFLC in Kotagiri. We will discuss next steps to take as the pandemic is brought under control.

List of Panelists:

Neema Kudva is Associate Professor of City & Regional Planning, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and Kouse Professor and Dean at Becker House, a living-learning residential community, at Cornell University. Her research focuses on small cities and their regions, and on institutional structures for equitable planning and development, primarily in South Asia.

Andrew C. Willford is Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University. His current research focuses upon mental health, psychiatry, neurology, and religious healing traditions in North America and India. He has previously worked on the politics of language, religion, identity, and belonging in Bangalore, and on forms of Tamil and Hindu displacement, revivalism, and identity politics in Malaysia.

Steven A. Wolf is Associate Professor of Natural Resources at Cornell University. He teaches and conducts research on environmental governance with a specific focus on efforts to secure public goods from private landscapes. While most projects address socioecological dynamics in industrialized societies of Europe and USA, he has current projects in India and China.

Pratim Roy is Founder and Director of Keystone Foundation. He was instrumental in setting up the Keystone Foundation with a vision of clarity and focus on eco-development initiatives.

Anita Varghese is Director at Keystone Foundation, and leads the Biodiversity Programmes. She holds a Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Hawaii.