We are delighted to be once again partnering with the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) to support year-long research fellowships for early-career international scholars at the at the University of Edinburgh. In this article one of our two new fellows for 2026, Dustin Lalkulhpuia (Maharaja Bir Bikram College, Agartala, India), introduces his research and shares his plans and ambitions for the year ahead – and beyond.
I am a scholar of Indigenous Studies, literature, and culture from Northeast India, with a PhD in English and Culture Studies. My work bridges oral traditions, ecological knowledge, and decolonial thought, focusing especially on Indigenous epistemologies or ‘ways of knowing’ from the Mizo, Naga, and Tripuri communities from Northeast India.
Alongside academic research, I have a decade of experience in public-facing cultural work through radio, television, translation, and community education. My interests centre on land-based philosophies, relational ethics, sovereignty, and the ways Indigenous concepts can reshape global debates on ecology, futurity, and political imagination.
Indigenous interventions: Tlawmngaihna, Jhum, and Kuknalim
This fellowship offers a rare combination of intellectual freedom, global visibility, and public impact. IASH’s commitment to decolonial scholarship and interdisciplinary work aligns precisely with my project, while the British Council’s mission to support equitable knowledge exchange, youth empowerment, and climate resilience resonates deeply with the Indigenous forms of thought I work with.
The fellowship provides the ideal platform to bring Northeast Indian epistemologies into global Indigenous Studies, while also transforming them into practical pedagogical and policy tools that can support community-led innovation.
My project focuses on three Indigenous concepts from Northeast India – Tlawmngaihna (a Mizo ethnic group’s ethic of unobligated care), jhum (ecological temporality – practised by most communities in Northeast India), and Kuknalim (ritual futurism of the Naga ethnic group). It repositions these concepts as theoretical interventions in global debates on ethics, ecology, and sovereignty. Instead of viewing them as cultural practices, the project treats them as epistemic and ontological frameworks with relevance for today’s world. In other words, these concepts are critical ‘knowledge tools’ that can help us to make sense of – and practically address – urgent global challenges.
By centring Indigenous ideas of care, land, and futurity, the project shows in particular how Northeast Indian knowledge can contribute to global conversations on climate change and ecological crisis. It explores how this knowledge offers relational, non-extractive ways of living with land that challenge dominant development and sustainability models.
Global challenges, global dialogue
We are living in a moment when climate collapse, extractive development, and epistemic inequality are forcing us to rethink foundational ideas about land, care, and sovereignty. Indigenous concepts from around the world have become central to these conversations – but Northeast India, despite being home to over 220 Indigenous communities, remains almost entirely absent.
This absence matters. Concepts like tlawmngaihna (ethic of unobligated care), jhum (cyclical ecological ontology), and Kuknalim (futurist sovereignty) offer alternative visions of survival and community. Through community-based research, digital storytelling, and comparative dialogues with Latin American traditions like buen vivir and comunalidad, the project develops a trans-Indigenous, relational methodology that brings these concepts into global theory while remaining grounded in their local lifeworlds.
This global dialogue is not only an act of epistemic justice; it expands the theoretical tools available for imagining sustainable and relational futures.
The project strengthens three priority areas of the British Council:
- Climate and green futures: By translating Indigenous ecological epistemologies into policy-oriented insights on sustainability and land-based resilience.
- Youth and cultural engagement: Through oral archives, storytelling platforms, and multilingual digital materials that foster intercultural understanding and community-led innovation.
- Equitable international collaboration: By creating dialogical knowledge exchange between India, the UK, and Latin America, and by developing practical educational resources for global audiences.
The fellowship becomes a site where Indigenous knowledge, global policy interests, and public-facing pedagogy meet.
Planning ahead
My plans for the next 12 months and many and varied! I hope to use my time at IASH and my collaboration with the British Council to publish two high-impact journal articles, to contribute public storytelling archives and digital zines for Indigenous youth, to write policy briefs on relational sovereignty and climate resilience, and to develop new teaching toolkits for educators and British Council practitioners.
Overall, the project aims to reposition Northeast Indian thought within global Indigenous Studies, expand the theoretical vocabulary of decolonial scholarship, and provide community-rooted educational tools that can inform climate and cultural programming beyond academia.
Looking further ahead, I intend to develop this research into a monograph, establish a comparative Indigenous studies network linking Northeast India and Latin America, and build sustained pedagogical collaborations between UK institutions and Indigenous communities in India.
What excites me most is the possibility of creating intellectual bridges.
I want to create bridges between Indigenous thinkers across continents, between academic theory and community knowledge, and between the local lifeworlds I come from and the global conversations that shape our future.
The year ahead offers the chance to make Indigenous thought visible not as heritage but as theory, and to return that theory to communities in forms that matter. That prospect is profoundly energising.