Highland Institute

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The Highland Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute based in Kohima, Nagaland, India. Founded in 2013, it has been associated with research projects, lecture series, workshops, scholarly publishing, postgraduate training, and collaborations with academic institutions in India and abroad. Publicly documented activities have included the Highlander Lecture series, collaborative projects such as Ekologos, Earthkeepers, and MyCClimate, and exhibitions and workshops in Kohima.

History

The Highland Institute was founded on 10 June 2013 in Kohima, Nagaland, by Michael Timothy Heneise and Kekhrielhoulie Yhome. Local news coverage of the institute's tenth anniversary in 2023 described it as an independent research institute, registered as a trust in Nagaland and staffed principally by local graduates.

Reporting on the institute's annual lecture series indicates that the Highlander Lecture dates to 2013. A 2024 report in The Morung Express on the 12th Highlander Lecture described the series as having been founded in 2013 and formerly known as the "Hutton Lectures".

In the early 2020s, the institute appeared in public reporting on workshops, conferences, and exhibitions in Kohima. In March 2023 it was listed among the funders of a two-day international workshop on ethnographic fieldwork and field recording at Kohima Science College, Jotsoma. UiT's Ekologos project page describes a programme hosted at the institute in December 2023 as the "11th Annual Highland Gathering and Winter School". In 2024, the institute hosted the Look Up exhibition in Kohima, described by Eastern Mirror as a public exhibition focused on indigenous astronomy and the natural world.

Programmes and activities

The Highland Institute's publicly documented activities include collaborative research projects, lecture series, workshops, winter schools, and postgraduate training.

One of the institute's principal collaborations has been the Ekologos project, coordinated by UiT The Arctic University of Norway in partnership with RV University, the State University of Campinas, the Institute of Marine Research, and the Highland Institute. UiT describes the project as combining co-designed research and teaching with staff and student mobility, summer and winter schools, fieldwork exchanges, and collaborative supervision. UiT also states that RV University and the Highland Institute co-hosted Ekologos Summer Film Schools in Nagaland in 2023 and 2024, focused on ethnographic filmmaking, environmental storytelling, and visual ethics.

The institute has also been listed as a partner in MyCClimate: Myanmar – Climate Actions, Conflict and Peacebuilding, a project led by the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). DIIS materials refer to fieldwork in Nagaland conducted with researchers linked to the Highland Institute, and later DIIS pages describe MyCClimate research based at the institute in Nagaland.

Public reporting in 2023 also documented the institute's role in academic events in Kohima. The Nagaland government's Department of Information and Public Relations listed the institute among the funders of a workshop on ethnographic fieldwork and field recording held at Kohima Science College, Jotsoma, in March 2023. In December 2023, Mokokchung Times and The Morung Express reported that the Highlander Lecture formed the culmination of a six-day conference and winter school on collaborative methodologies in global environmental humanities hosted by the institute as part of the Ekologos project.

By 2025, institute materials described a Postgraduate Certificate in Research (PGCertR), as a 12-month intensive research programme. The institute's Bower Lectures page states that, from 2025 onward, the Ursula Graham Bower Lectures were formally integrated into that programme.

Publications and collaborations

The Highland Institute has been involved in scholarly publishing through journals and related publishing initiatives. It is associated with The Highlander Journal, an open-access journal hosted by the institute, and with Highlander Press, described by the institute as its publishing arm. Issues and articles associated with The Highlander Journal have also been deposited in Zenodo.

The institute has also participated in collaborations with universities and research organisations in India and internationally. Publicly documented partnerships include collaboration with UiT The Arctic University of Norway, RV University, the State University of Campinas in Brazil, and the Institute of Marine Research in Norway through the Ekologos project. UiT project pages also describe RV University and the Highland Institute as co-hosts of Ekologos summer film schools in Nagaland.

The institute has also been listed as a project partner in the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) research project MyCClimate: Myanmar – Climate Actions, Conflict and Peacebuilding. These collaborations have included research projects and training activities documented on UiT and DIIS project pages.

Media coverage and public engagement

The Highland Institute and its projects have been covered in local and regional news media in Nagaland, particularly in relation to public events, exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and research findings.

In 2023, The Morung Express reported on the institute's tenth anniversary, while the Nagaland government's Department of Information and Public Relations listed the institute among the funders of a two-day international workshop on ethnographic fieldwork and field recording held at Kohima Science College, Jotsoma.

In 2024, Eastern Mirror reported on the opening of the institute's Look Up exhibition in Kohima, describing it as a public exhibition focused on indigenous astronomy, cosmology, plants, animals, and butterflies.

In late 2023, Mokokchung Times reported that the institute hosted its 11th annual Highlander Lecture as the culmination of a six-day international conference on collaborative methodologies in global environmental humanities, held as part of the Ekologos project.

Coverage in 2025 and 2026 focused especially on the institute's research outputs. In November 2025, Eastern Mirror reported on findings from the Urbaltour project, a collaboration between the Highland Institute and the French Institute of Pondicherry, which argued that Kohima's tourism economy was overly dependent on the annual Hornbill Festival and recommended a more sustainable year-round strategy. In December 2025, the same newspaper covered a keynote presentation based on the Earthkeepers project at the seventh international Naga culture symposium in Dimapur. In January 2026, The Morung Express reported on the launch of a report on traditional ecological knowledge and climate resilience in Eastern Nagaland based on the Earthkeepers project.

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