I situate my research and teaching in Indigenous political ecology, an exciting approach that combines the strengths of political ecology and Indigenous studies to bear on intersecting questions of power, knowledge, and agency in particular Indigenous cosmopolitical and socioenvironmental contexts. I have conducted research on wildlife conservation and state formation, Indigenous knowledge and environmental governance, road building and infrastructure development, dynamics of agropastoral lives, multispecies and more-than-human geographies, and oral and textual traditions in the Himalayas. I primarily employ qualitative methods that are grounded in ethnographic, embodied, multimodal, and collaborative approaches to producing and mobilizing knowledge.

My current research projects include 1) a book-length investigation of how Dolpopa, the Indigenous Peoples of Dolpo, navigate the material conditions and structural processes of Nepali state building and territorialization that are realized through conservation and development projects centered on the caterpillar fungus and the snow leopard, 2) a long-term, collaborative in-situ documentation project to collect, translate and publish a wide array of Dolpopa oral literature; and center them as the foundation to theorize the relational and governance values of Indigenous knowledge, and 3) a feature-length film that takes an observational approach to document the relationship between Dolpopa and Nepali state actors in everyday acts of governing the environment. My research and community-engaged works have been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Firebird Foundation, and the National Geographic Society.

I was born and raised in Dolpo, a high-altitude borderland area in Nepal where the Himalayas meet the Tibetan plateau. Although I have spent most of my recent life away from the region, including as a grateful guest here on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) territory, the Himalayas anchor much of my personal and professional commitments. I aspire to develop meaningful collaboration with Indigenous community members and other scholars from the Himalayas to the Salish sea on issues of mutual interest.

2025

Dolpopa, Phurwa D. “State love and the art of living with extractivism.” In the Book Review Forum: Living with Oil & Coal: Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India by Dolly Kikkon, Society & Space. https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/state-love-and-the-art-of-living-with-extractivism

Gurung, Phurwa Dondrub, Logan Emlet, and Nyima Gurung. “Kyidug: Pandemic, Food Systems and Health Ecologies in Dolpo.” In Campbell, B., Cameron, M. and Subba, T. (eds.) The Routledge International Handbook of Himalayan Environments, Development and Wellbeing, 467-475 (Chapter 41). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003450894-48/kyidug-gurung-phurwa-dondrub-logan-emlet-nyima-gurung

Robson, Ellen B., Peter McGowran, Hanna A. Ruszczyk, Bruce D. Malamud, Edward Simpson, Alexander L. Densmore, Neil Denton, Natasha Chapplow, Phurwa Gurung, Tilly E. Hall, Rebekah Harries, Jack Jenkins, Apil KC, Richard Kotter, Ashutosh Kumar, Bina Limbu, David Milledge, Gina Porter, Nick Rosser, Faith E. Taylor, David G. Toll, Mike G. Winter, Kifle Woldearegay. “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Intersections of Roads, Sustainable Development, and Disaster Resilience.” International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 128 (October): 105691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105691

2023

Gurung, Phurwa. “Governing caterpillar fungus: Participatory conservation as state-making, territorialization, and dispossession in Dolpo, Nepal.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 6(3): 1745-1766. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221132236

2022

Gurung, Phurwa and Ken Bauer. “Infrastructures of Change: Development among pastoralists in Dolpo, Nepal (1990–2020).” In Heneise, M. and Wouters, J. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Highland Asia. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429345746-14/infrastructures-change-phurwa-gurung-kenneth-bauer

2021

Gurung, Phurwa. “Challenging Infrastructural Orthodoxies: Political and Economic Geographies of a Himalayan Road.” Geoforum 120 (March): 103–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.020

Gurung, Tashi W., and Gurung, Phurwa D. Review of “The Ends of Kinship: Connecting Himalayan Lives between Nepal and New York” by Sienna R. Craig, Seattle: University of Washington Press. HIMALAYA: Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies.

• Graduate Part-Time Instructor Award (2023), Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder)
• Graduate Teaching Excellence Award (2022), United Government of Graduate Students, CU Boulder
• Geoforum Best Student Paper Award (2022)
• Dor Bahadur Bista Prize (2020) – Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies