A Rendezvous with Dr. Merlin Franco on Biocultural Diversity and Global Academia
Council Room, MCC
Wednesday, 15th July 2026
#mccinternationalprogrammes
Dr. Merlin Franco, Senior Assistant Professor, University of Darussalam, Brunei, [MSc Botany, MCC, 2001-2003] was here with us today, Wednesday, 15th July 2026, as part of our Global Alumni Engagement Series, from 3 – 4 pm in the Council Room.
In his hour-long interactions with our deans, faculty members and students, Dr. Franco had a lot of highly engaging anecdotes, interesting reminiscences of his days in MCC, and invaluable insights for students aspiring to study abroad.
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So happy to note that many of our Interns and students had very insightful questions for Dr. Franco.
Here goes a few interesting excerpts from the Interview –
Sir, how did you get into this famous public University in Brunei?
Well, it wasn’t that difficult. Educational institutions all over the world we tend to operate in similar ways. So it is just a matter of cultural adjustment. For me, personally, I look upon every day as a great learning opportunity.
I found this fellowship opportunity in Curtin University, Australia – a public research university based in Bentley, Perth, and I pitched in a proposal, saying that I wanted to work with indigenous communities, studying the relationship between culture, indigenous languages and nature, which comes under a paradigm called biocultural diversity. So i applied for that, then I got selected, and everything happened so quickly. And from there I applied to Brunei, and that’s how it happened.
On possible areas for research abroad…
Southeast Asia is in the crosswinds of two major super powers - China and the United States. Biodiversity is one field where you will never have a dearth of job opportunities. It also comes with certain requirements – like relocating, travelling all around the world, etc.
One of the most important challenges facing academia today is - how can you bridge the natural sciences and social sciences? Strangely, they don’t seem to talk to each other except like a few of us, we are doing our best to engage across disciplines. Otherwise, we hardly talk to each other now, although all of us of nature lovers!
You have English Literature professionals, you have psychologists, you have geography specialists, you have environmental scientists, and we all work on biodiversity and environmental studies like a field, and as we go ahead, we realise that we are all talking about the same thing! Sadly, we don’t work together.
Now, the future is going to be for those people who understand both of these and bring these two together.
So the policy interface is going to be very important if you can understand how human beings relate to biodiversity. There’s going to be a huge scope for application in the field of sustainability.
In the sciences, we learn about how habitat heterogeneity contributes to language diversity.
In Borneo, you can see it happening right before you ask now. You have languages that have all originated in the last 100 years. And it is so beautiful - you could be in a landscape surrounded by four different settlements.
You know, when we live in an a hugely populated country you see hundreds of people per day. As you walk in Ranganathan Street, you see at least a thousand people per minute. The pitfall of that is that - we take human resources for granted - we step on a person, and we don’t even say sorry, but in Brunei, they give a lot of importance to human life and human emotions. So when they realise you have been hurt, people can go out of their way to ensure that they your grievances are redressed.
On how a letter to MCC, and a proposal to a University Abroad were turning points in his life…
Sometimes when you are in your lowest point in your life, you become bold enough to do the unthinkable. So I haven’t been to MCC before that, but I have known about MCC a lot, its quality of teaching, etc. But I was also disappointed that I couldn’t get in, and it was already one month past the admission and then one fine morning, I woke up and I thought I should write to Dr. Livingston, the then HoD, Dept of Botany.
In my letter I wrote, why I was attracted to MCC. Because institutions are very keen to know how you would make use of their resources, and also because we also don’t want to ruin somebody else’s chance, right?
Imagine if MCC had invested on me, and after three months I had discontinued the course and gone? That’s hence institutions are very keen to know why you wish to join them. Secondly, I remember having mentioned in my letter, ‘How’ it would be helpful for me.
We never think about that, especially when we are young, we just assume that the door is closed.
Maybe somebody left the job or left the seat and there was a vacancy, and you’re approaching at the right time. So that was a lesson for me, always keep knocking! Never stop!
As regards the proposal –
The proposal is very important! It’s the same as your research interest! I laugh at myself when I think back upon the time when I wrote a proposal for the famous ethnobotanist Hunt –
Hunt was a great famous person and he was very much interested in my research that I was doing with indigenous people. He sent me a long list of emails, and finally he had asked me to send him my research interest.
I just wrote him back a sentence – I am interested in so-and-so and so!
Well, that’s because I didn't know that when people ask for your research interest, they are asking for your research statement. So a research statement is a highly researched, meticulously developed research argument. And that’s where you shine.
That’s where you show that you have done your homework, and you have clearly thought where your research career is going to be. You have all your hypothesis in mind, the trends that you have picked up or whatever you want, and then you defend it, and then you say that you are the right person to do this, and that you’re really passionate about this. This complements your research proposal.
A research proposal can be fluid. As for me, there was this opportunity on studying the relationship between language, nature and culture, and I wondered what would a botanist do with that?
How could I contribute?
That’s where my learning experience from the English department and social sciences came in. We have an interface field of inquiry called folk nomenclature or folk taxonomy, like, for instance, when English professionals study about first language acquisition and L1 and L2, and then we ask people, can you please give us 10 words in L1 and then you compare them with L2.
So when I was working with the indigenous community, I realised that you could do the same things with plants. Replace words with the folk names of plants. Now, these folk names of plants are highly condensed forms of local knowledge.
So I argued that I’d be using folk taxonomy and folk nomenclature as an interface between native languages and biodiversity. So much of my literature review was coming from folk classification, Indigenous language studies, and language diversity theories.
And so I was able to combine ethnobiology and language diversity theories, and so that was my proposal,
said Dr. Franco.
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And guess what? Dr. Franco is also an accomplished author with Springer, Taylor & Francis, and an acclaimed novelist as well. He has written the much-popular novel titled, A Dowryless Wedding. The novel is a satirical comedy of manners, that follows Franklin, an eco-socialist researcher in Kerala, who faces family chaos and societal backlash when he bravely refuses to accept a dowry for his arranged marriage with Nisha. The book explores the bitter realism and cultural clashes surrounding the patriarchal tradition of dowry in India. You may want to order a copy of the book for yourself HERE on Amazon.
Coming back -
The rendezvous was facilitated by the Deanery of International Programmes, MCC, in association with the Deanery of Research and Development, MCC.
Our vibrant interns with the Office of International Programmes – Ms. Irin Reji Thomas, Mr. Mathew Alex, Ms. Meera Hari, Ms. Rakshaya, and Ms. Vishnupriya coordinated the logistics and the smooth conduct of the event in the Council Room.
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