A Year of Titles: Dr. Fausto Sarmiento receives Fulbright U.S. Global Scholar Award

Fausto O. Sarmiento, professor of mountain science and director of the Neotropical Montology Collaboratory, at the Department of Geography of the University of Georgia, has received a Fulbright U.S. Global Scholar Award to Austria, Japan and Chile. Sarmiento will research and lecture at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the World Heritage Studies UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage and sacred mountains at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, and the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Evolution, Laboratory of Territorial Studies of the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia, as part of a project to establish a worldwide network of montology, the convergent, transdisciplinary mountain science. Sarmiento will be researching and lecturing abroad, spending about two months in each country.

The Global Scholar award will be used to develop a global network of montologists working towards restoration of mountainscapes. “With the networking facilitated by the award,” Sarmiento states, “my research goals will be enhanced by the establishment of a book series of montology, the launching of Urban Montology program as a joint effort, the integration of the sacred dimension in considering mountains as sentient landscapes, and the strengthening of the disciplinary field with an international conference on Montology at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome.” 

Sarmiento will lay the groundwork for an Institute for Convergent Mountain Science with the establishment of a professional network for 1) training and development of young scholars and graduate students on themes of tropical mountain conservation; 2) implementing collaborative research for mountain sustainable and regenerative development; and 3) engaging the general public in a better appreciation of decolonial mountain landscapes. In the United States and abroad, he plans to share new narratives about mountain science from transdisciplinary angles, offer guest lectures and focus workshops, prepare white papers and collaborative grant proposals on Montological applications, and push the prominent role of the International Geographical Union’s Commission of Mountain Studies as chair.

Sarmiento remarks that “receiving one of the most coveted awards empowers [him] to become a Global Scholar in pursuit of better convergent mountain science worldwide.”

To learn more about Dr. Fausto Sarmiento’s work, please visit his directory page on the Geography Department’s website. You can also follow his work on Google Scholar. See the full release from the Fulbright Scholar Program.