ABSTRACT
In 2009, Tufts University received a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to fund an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program on Water and Diplomacy. This IGERT program became the cornerstone of other Water Diplomacy projects, such as the Water Diplomacy Research Coordination Network, the annual Water Diplomacy Workshop, and Aquapedia. In the ensuing decade since the awarding of the grant, the Water Diplomacy Program has educated 27 doctoral students from across four different schools within the university. Students and faculty in the program collaborated to produce four books, 46 refereed publications, and more than 100 conference presentations across the globe. As part of their research, presentations, and internships, students travelled to at least 24 countries. These achievements could not have been possible without faculty and staff who were invested in the success of the program. In this chapter, we invite their reflections on the challenges, opportunities, and overall experience as part of this 10-year experiment in interdisciplinary Water Diplomacy research at Tufts. These reflections are shared in the hope that they may improve the experience of those embarking on similar interdisciplinary experiments.
