Islam discusses water diplomacy, faith, and climate change

Tufts faculty regularly contribute their expertise at conferences, speaking engagements, and other events that center around their areas of research. Professor Shafiqul Islam of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering recently shared his insights at two different conferences. The first aligned with Islam’s work in water diplomacy in the South Asian region. Held at Yale University, The Monsoon Revolution in Bangladesh conference brought together experts from around the globe to discuss recent developments in Bangladesh. Islam participated in the section about Cross-Border Relations and Water Diplomacy. 

The conference was organized by the Yale Research Initiative on Innovation & Scale (Y-RISE) and the South Asian Studies Council, both based at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International & Area Studies at Yale University.

Islam also participated in a roundtable conversation about the role of faith and climate change in research at a conference at Boston University. His session focused on faith, climate, and science. An interdisciplinary, multifaith group including Islam, a researcher at the University of Delaware, a provisional deacon in the United Methodist Church, the co-director on the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, and an assistant professor of world religions and intercultural studies at the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, came together for a conversation on faith and climate change. 

The event was part of a series of roundtables organized by the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University. The roundtable in Boston built off the outcomes of the first event in Oxford where participants identified useful research questions that could advance understanding and action on environmental values in the context of Islam and Muslim societies. US-based scholars gathered at Boston University for a second conversation to begin to answer the questions devised at the first event.  

Islam joined Tufts in 2004 and served as the School of Engineering’s Associate Dean of Research from 2006 – 2009. His research interests include water diplomacy, climate challenges, data-driven decision making, and principled pragmatism. He currently leads D3M@Tufts, an initiative which aims to change how we teach data science in STEM and non-STEM disciplines alike, and conducts water diplomacy policy research at Tufts.

Learn more about Professor Shafiqul Islam.