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Research including trans-Himalayan children and youth experiences of circular migration is often amalgamated under wider migration discourses. From 22 semi-structured interviews and three focus group sessions with 22 trans-Himalayan children/youth, this paper examines intersections of embodiment, agency, and circular migration in Nepal through what this paper frames as embodied circular migration. It then delves into this by addressing the question of how young people periodically returning for work in trans-Himalayan villages contribute towards their educational security in Kathmandu. The paper outlines how young people's agency towards choosing to engage in circular migration for work, circumvented structural challenges of not having identity documents (citizenship/birth certificates) needed to legally work or pursue higher studies in Kathmandu. Secondly, circular migration patterns that young people embodied reflected spatio-temporal aspects of migration that differed from their previous generations based on relationships to education/work, citizenship, and gender expectations. Lastly, this paper found that youth circular migration was complicated by the Maoist Insurgency, which greatly (re)structured education/work, circular migration, and family relationships in the trans-Himalayan regions. Overall, this paper connects migration and youth studies by bringing embodied lived experiences of young people from a disparate region of the world to the foreground of this ethnographic study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world economy has shifted from export of natural resources to Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE) at present. The addition of hi-tech knowledge to finished products has provided impetus to many crippling economies. The role of higher education is very vital in realising this KBE. This is evident from the role that the US and European universities have assumed as business incubators and income generators through intensive industry-university liaison. However, the higher education institutes in Pakistan are still teaching-focussed. The need is to revamp higher education institutions by identifying the impediments in higher education research and exploring ways and means for improving it. The data for this study was collected from 655 faculty members selected from six universities through an open-ended questionnaire. For increasing reliability in the findings, a short semi-structured interview was conducted with 20 research experts. The questionnaire data was quantitatively analysed using percentages while the interviews were thematically analysed for drawing conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]