Human geography in Bangladesh

Growing up in Bangladesh, Naznin Nahar Sultana enjoyed looking out over the lush green hills east of Chittagong, the nation's second-largest city on the Bay of Bengal. But as she got older, the hills were vanishing due to development and landslides that claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed thousands of homes.

Why? And why do people continue to live in such a dangerous landscape?

Those are the questions that now drive Sultana, a doctoral candidate in geography and spatial sciences at the University of Delaware. Funded as a Graduate Community Engagement Summer Scholar, Sultana spent the summer in Bangladesh doing field research, speaking to government officials, activists, NGOs and the community in the hills.

"Community engagement runs the full gamut from local to global," said Michael Vaughan, the University's chief community engagement officer and faculty director of the University's Community Engagement Initiative (CEI). "In our backyard or thousands of miles away, we can partner and collaborate with communities to address complex problems at an individual and/or societal scale."

Graduate Community Engagement Summer Scholars is a long-standing summer program offered by CEI to provide highly motivated graduate students the opportunity to immerse themselves in community-based projects.

Bangladesh is one of the world's most climate-vulnerable countries. Cyclones, floods, riverbank erosion and salinity intrusion have forced those who rely on agriculture for their livelihood to find new places to live.