Alumni AudioLab is a monthly podcast series where alumni of the OeAD talk about themselves and their research. The OeAD brings together researchers from all over the world and from different fields of research who spent part of their research career in Austria – some of them have even stayed here. In the Alumni AudioLab they tell their stories, talk about their scientific ambitions, their motivations and their personal backgrounds. It is an open format for all those who are not only interested in science as such but also in the people behind it.
https://oead.at/en/to-austria/alumni/audiolab
AAL_31 Alumni AudioLab with Sony Baral
Right during this podcast recording, Dr Sony Baral received the acceptation to be the first woman to take up a position as an associate professor at the Institute for Forestry at Thribhuvan University/Nepal. The OeAD warmly congratulates her!
Sony Baral grew up in rural Nepal, an area where forests play a major role for the population. They are the basis of life, living space, provide fuelwood for cooking and heating, and products to sell. On the other hand, especially cooking and heating with fuelwood is responsible for a large part of CO2 emissions in the rural areas of Nepal. Sony Baral has devoted her academic career to these CO2 emissions and the forests in Nepal in general.
In 2019 she completed her PhD at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, as a scholarship holder of the. In addition, she has been working repeatedly at the interface between science and policy making for many years. A work that encouraged her to study additionally law since 2018.
In this podcast she talks about forest management in Nepal, about the special features of so-called community forests and about the discrepancy between firewood as a necessity on the one hand and as a cause of CO2 emissions on the other hand.