Experts from around the world participated in UR’s International Education Week in November to discuss solutions to local and global sustainability. This year, students had a chance to meet representatives from Amazonian communities from Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. Since 2007, Richmond faculty and students have traveled to the Amazon to collaborate with Indigenous leaders to study changes to the rainforest.
In November, UR Now wrote about the ongoing, growing relationship between the university and Amazonian communities. “I’ve known Andrés” — one of the indigenous leaders — “since he was 6, and now he is a 25-year-old chief of his village,” David Salisbury, a professor of geography, environment, and sustainability, says in the story. “He is the one I have known the longest, but I am friends with all of them. This is a dream come true. So many times, I have stayed in their homes, and now they’re staying in mine.”
International Education Week has become a signature fall event on campus. The weeklong schedule included more than 20 official events — from plenary talks and discussion roundtables to gallery talks, films, trips down the James River, and an international dinner. Other speakers included Indigenous leaders in Virginia and a Maori law professor from University of Otago in New Zealand. The full program and photos and videos from the sessions are available on the event's website here.
“UR is unique in having campuswide engagement,” said Martha Merritt, dean and the Carole M. Weinstein Chair of International Education. “Most universities might have an event, not sustained community. We like taking intellectual risks.