When planning to apply to the prestigious Fulbright Global Scholar award competition, I was concerned about the actual research prospectus of achieving a global significance in countries on different continents. Then I recalled the academic efforts of developing a worldwide awareness to study mountains with the new transdisciplinary approach, now known as “montology,” and knew exactly how to proceed. I relied on my previous experience as a Fulbrighter with the International Education/Research award to Japan in 2004 and my later appointment as the first Latino faculty in the 2009–11 cohort of the Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassadors program. I also included insights gained as chair of the Commission of Mountain Studies of the International Geographical Union (IGU), the Mountain Specialists at the World Commission of Protected Areas (WCPA) of the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN), and at the Steering Committee of the International Program of the Satoyama Initiative (IPSI) of the University of the United Nations (UNU).
Chronicle of a Fulbright Global Scholar awardee
30 June 2023As part of his Fulbright grant in the 2022–23 program year, Fausto O. Sarmiento traveled to Austria, Japan, and Chile to conduct research and increase awareness of the study of mountains known as montology.
By Fausto O. Sarmiento
The proposal, submitted with the title “Integrative Montology: Bridging Altitudes, Longitudes and Latitudes,”grapples with the applicability of the new science of mountains as a transdisciplinary, noetic, and consilient field. Originally suggested in the late 1970s, montology has now become a standard keyword for research and teaching about mountain geographies. The interaction of different hemispheres, thus longitudes, with different scientific approaches, thus latitudes, will help integration of the new conceptual frames for mountains, thus altitude. By networking with colleagues of similar interests in institutions dealing with mountain conservation, the goal was to prepare the grounds for the establishment of the Institute of Montology Convergent Sciences. This project plans to add curricular and field practices for the new mountain geographies, furthering global trends for developing montology across boundaries—disciplinary, territorial, decolonial, and epistemographical angles alike. I succeeded with the proposal by including collaborating targets in Austria, with the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research (IGF) in Innsbruck; in Japan, with the UNESCO Chair of cultural heritage of the University of Tsukuba in Tsukuba; and in Chile, with the Laboratory of the Southern Andes of Austral University in Valdivia. These sites complemented nicely with continued collaboration with Ecuadorian institutions, such as ESPOCH, PUCE and USFQ, as well as the regional office of CEPEIGE in Quito.
Originally suggested in the late 1970s, montology has now become a standard keyword for research and teaching about mountain geographies.
I was then able to secure a good representation of a global effort by including the graticule of equatorial, northern, southern, western, and eastern views about mountains. I was glad to start in Austria, particularly for their long tradition of interdisciplinary work and the support for montological advocacy from now retired professors Christopher Stadel and Axel Borsdorf, and the expertise and professionalism of the Fulbright Austria staff in Vienna, who provided a welcome workshop to familiarize participants not only with the Fulbright Program, but also with the academic, scientific, and social spheres of Fulbright outreach. Of significance was the opportunity to partake in a reception at the US embassy, where I chatted not only with Ambassador Victoria Reggie Kennedy and peer grantees, but also with Anton Zeilinger, the former president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who a few days later received the Nobel Prize in Physics! While in Innsbruck, I met with colleagues at IGF, offered an opening talk at the International Mountain Conference, where I also presented my work on the Quijos River basin in Ecuador. In addition, we explored the surrounding mountain sites and worked with my colleague Andreas Haller in preparing publications and strategizing internationalization via collaborative agreements with the potential partners and my home institution (UGA). The ÖAW also had a press release for its Newsletter based on an interview about my work in montology.


My experience in Japan brought me once again to a different cultural setting than southern Tyrol. Mt. Tsukuba provided inspiration and examples on how culture and nature are hybridized and how to place conservation values on cultural ecosystem services. The University of Tsukuba faculty of human sciences were open to interaction and exchanges. I presented a university-wide guest lecture on montology, which generated even more diverse interest in the topics of mountain research, particularly about climate change and biocultural diversity. Teaching mountain ecology was a discovery for Japanese students who loved “pizza and learning” exercises, “the American way.” Working with my colleague Masahito Yoshida allowed me to integrate Eastern scientific traditions, especially when we visited the Kii Mountain Range World Heritage Sites of Yoshino National Park and Omine-san. We developed an article in the gendered mountains and reviewed literature about the Japanese tradition of the Satoyama landscapes and other biocultural heritage topics, published in the journal Geographies.


My experience in Chile provided an opportunity to link with young scholars who are developing projects of collaborative mountain science in the Southern Andes. With their assistance I was able to visit field sites in the Atacama Desert, in the coastal palm forests, in the Araucanía as well as in the Valdivian jungle. Based at the Austral University, I offered guest talks and interacted with students who showed me the beautiful landscape of the Calle Calle river watershed, all the way to the Pacific coast. Working with my colleague Tomás Ibarra, I interacted with graduate students at the Pontific Catholic University of Chile in Villarrica, where we used the “smoking” volcano Rukapillán as the target of montology reviews. Applying the Oxford Don methodology, I maintained group meetings that helped innovative teaching be successful. Also, working with my colleague Carla Marchánt at the Austral University in Valdivia, we were able to progress in the preparation of book chapters and a special issue co-edited with my Fulbright hosts entitled “Perspectives on Mountain Conservation.”


Through the preparation and execution of my project for the Fulbright Global Scholar award, I was able to obtain approval for a book series on montology with the Springer-Nature/Switzerland publishing house. My colleagues and I have already produced the first volume of the series: Montology Palimpsest: A Primer of Mountain Geographies. This book has been awarded the “Denali Research Accomplishment Award” by the Association of American Geographers (AAG). Finally, we have also produced a “white paper” entitled 4-D Global Montology: Toward Convergent and Transdisciplinary Mountain Science Across Time and Space published in Jaca, Spain, in the prestigious Pirineos, Revista de Ecología de Montaña.
I am very grateful to the Fulbright Program for having given me the opportunity to join a select group “full of bright minds” to prepare the academic strategy for achieving a global effort in creating an Institute for Montology Convergent Science.
Fausto O. Sarmiento is a full professor of geography at the University of Georgia and an internationally recognized leader of montology who directs the Neotropical Montology Collaboratory. He looks into human-environment interactions informed by evidence of landscape transformation and dynamics of land cover/land use change, with critical biogeography, political ecology insights, historical documentation, neoecological field research and modeling for alternative scenarios of sustainability and regenerative development. He received the Fulbright Global Scholar Award in 2022–23.
All photos courtesy of Fausto O. Sarmiento