Sandra Nichols

Sandra is a cultural geographer currently engaged in research on Alexander von Humboldt’s 1802 journey in Peru’s far north for a book she is writing comparing Humboldt’s account with the reality of those places today, as well as their deeper past based on recent archaeological excavations and scholarly revisions of the region’s long history of human occupation.  The goal is to shed light on a region that is one of the world’s biological and evolutionary hotspots, where Andean highlands straddle the continental divide between the Pacific and Amazonian drainage systems, and whose cultural development spans millennia.  Despite its deep and rich history, today the region is impoverished, poorly understood and many of its fragile ecosystems are under threat of environmental collapse.  This project, begun with an inter-disciplinary Peruvian team in 2016,  is a collaboration with the Mountain Institute-Peru (Instituto de Montaña) where she is a Senior Fellow/Affiliate.

https://mountain.pe/equipo/sandra-nichols/

Sandra grew up in Lima, Peru and holds a BA in Anthropology and MA in Communication, both from Stanford.  Following a 20+ year career producing documentary films around the world, including for Public Television and the NOVA Series, she returned to academia and earned a PhD in geography from UC Berkeley in 2002.

The Humboldt-in-Peru Project – Highlights

CV and Profile: 
Academia profile
Sandra Nichols
ARF Partner
Department:
Mountain Institute - Peru
Email:
snichols08@berkeley.edu

Research Location

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