Jan VollmuthExperiential Learning Advisor & Research-Practitioner
I work with organisations, educational institutions, and universities to reroot education in land, livelihoods, and community life. I support transitions towards regenerative ways of learning, living, and working.
"Where is your PhD in keeping alive?"— A goat herder, high in the Himalayas
We got estranged from the earth.
We were educated out of the ability to regenerate life.
The Human Way is a path back.
I accompany you through periods of re-orientation —
when established patterns no longer feel aligned
and a different way forward is needed.
I began as an industrial engineer — optimising supply chains and managing business systems. Then a lockdown, a crossing of the Himalayas with shepherds who had no choice but to be out in the rain — because it was their livelihood, their life.
For years I lived inside communities that carry an inherited attention to the land, and the ability to grow food and sustain their own livelihoods. What began as a Master's in Outdoor and Experiential Learning became something the university couldn't confer — a PhD in Keeping Alive.
My research examines Indigenous-informed and place-based practices — with attention to how environment and lived experience shape the capabilities individuals and communities need to sustain and regenerate life.
I chose to learn from life rather than from classrooms and lecture halls. I help people do the same — through lived experience, personal reflection, and encounters that leave something behind.
Through my practice as an industrial engineer and lean specialist, I learned to read systems — to see what holds and what fails quietly — and design better ones. I bring that eye and that analytical capacity to this work.
When the old approach no longer fits and a new one isn't clear yet — I walk alongside you through the turmoil. What I bring is not a method. It is a perspective drawn from the field — shaped by the challenges I faced and the experiences I gained. I don't arrive with answers. I think alongside — co-creating the questions worth asking and the directions worth exploring.
Courses, modules, and full program architecture — grounded in field evidence and brought in by someone who has lived what he teaches. For institutions who are embracing nature-based and regenerative learning and who are ready to root education in land and community life.
I don't hand over a framework and leave. I co-design and co-build the structures, processes, and practices alongside the people who will hold it. The goal is to build what lasts — not dependency on an outside expert, but capacity that stays.
The journeys are not driven by predetermined outcomes — they unfold across community and outdoor settings, opening space for attention, reflection, and engagement with place.
Most of us were educated for a world that measures success in credentials. This workshop makes the gap visible — between what modern education prepared us for, and what life actually demands. Participants leave with a different question: not what did you score? But what are you capable of keeping alive?
Full day · Residential · Intensive week
We inherited a worldview we never chose — about progress, development, and what it means to be educated. Absorbed so thoroughly we stopped noticing it was there. This workshop creates space to name these patterns, examine them, and put down what no longer serves. Participants leave lighter. And with more clarity.
Full day · Residential · Intensive week
Most of us no longer have roots. This workshop is an invitation to step onto a different path — one where land is not backdrop but centre. Where learning and living are inseparable. Where reciprocity is the guiding principle, not extraction. And where collectivism is the central pillar, not individualism.
Full day · Residential · Intensive week
A few days immersed in communities where people steward land and regenerate life. This is not a tour. The experience challenges inherited assumptions, expands perspective, and cultivates the practical and relational capacities needed to navigate real-world complexity. Participants will engage in grassroots community initiatives, gain hands-on experience, and shape regenerative futures from the ground. Designed for cohorts, mixed teams, and institutions. Facilitated by trusted local partners.
A few days immersed in Himalayan pastoral life. Walking on pastoral routes that lead to magnificent alpine pastures — where goat, sheep, Chauri or yaks are grazing. Participants will follow the rhythms of the herders who carry an inherited attention to the land. This is not comfortable. It is not designed to be. You will not come back unchanged. Open to individuals or groups. Guided by people who call the mountains their home.
What becomes possible when education is rooted in land, livelihoods, and community life?
Immersive field research across Himalayan communities in Nepal and Northern India.
Autoethnographic inquiry combining prolonged participation, observation, reflection, and dialogue with community members.
Survival literacy Experiential learning Place-based education Learning ecosystems Kinship pedagogy
At the center of my research stands a community-based learning ecosystem in Nepal's mid-hills — where I spent years, deeply immersed in the day-to-day. What I found there became the foundation this work is built on.
This is not a case study observed from the outside — it is evidence gathered from the inside. I translate that field engagement into practical frameworks for learning ecosystem design, community development, and regenerative practice.
What this research ultimately produced is not only a body of evidence. It produced a provocation — the PhD in Keeping Alive. This is not an academic degree, but a lifelong relearning of how to keep alive.
We domesticated children in the name of education.
We took them out of fields, forests, kitchens, and workshops — and placed them in rows inside four walls. Stillness became obedience. Curiosity became distraction. Compliance became success.
Drawing on years of immersive fieldwork across the Himalayan region, this booklet explores what we left behind in the name of development — and what it takes to reclaim it. It offers no model to copy. It is an invitation to reimagine the ways we live, learn, and raise the next generation — together.
The question is no longer: What are your credentials?
It is: What are you capable of keeping alive?
Your work is an urgent call to overhaul the current system — and it feels like a lived, embodied answer to the questions Illich posed decades ago. What moves me most is that you are offering not just critique, but proof of life: that learning happens when institutional structures step away, when rhythm follows the sun and the seasons, when learning and living are inseparable.
— Reader, The PhD in Keeping Alive
I had a conversation with Jan Vollmuth after seeing his post about 'Keeping Alive' and the themes of experiential learning, place-based learning and learning through participation in living systems. I keep coming back to this thought: learning and living should not feel like two separate things. The more connected learning is to life, the more powerful it becomes.
— Education Partnership Manager, RSPB — The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
Field Notes
The field notes that became the booklet.
Read on SubstackIf something in this work speaks to your situation — write to me.
The conversation is free. I'll tell you honestly whether I can help.