Academic Research

I have been looking for scholarly work done on hugelkultur, but have not been able to find any. Can anyone link me to academic research that has been done on the topic?

This may be why you can't find any: "Monsanto’s college strangehold
A new report has shocking findings about the connection between corporate funding and agricultural research" http://www.salon.com/2012/05/14/monsantos_college_strangehold/
And this: http://grist.org/article/monsanto-u/

Luckily, these are 3+ years old articles and Monsanto is dying: http://naturalsociety.com/official-mcdonalds-monsanto-losing-money-fast/
http://news.yahoo.com/monsanto-cuts-first-quarter-earnings-guidance-152311796--finance.html (but it still needs to die a lot more!!!)

Hugelkultur is relatively small scale, depends on how much wood you have laying around, and it is not always the appropriate technique (See https://permies.com/t/51382/hugelkultur/Geoff-Lawton-Results-Hugelkultur-Years ). A lot of the academic world is opposed to permaculture (and incidentally hugelkultur) because the profits won't be extracted from local communities to the mega corporations funding the research or providing the pesticides/herbicides.

BUT! I found this: http://lewis-mg-mrc.org/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/HugelkulturBrochure.170135817.pdf (Some information and photos are courtesy of our very own Paul Wheaton at http://richsoil.com/hugelkultur/ and UC Berkeley at http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/blakegarden/?tag=hugelkultur.)

It would be difficult to do meaningful science on hugelkultur. Too many variables involved.

It would also take several years for the hugel to mature to the point of having measurable results.
Most undergrad students are not looking for multi-year projects. They usually want something that they can quantify before the semester's end, and this would be a project more for summer evaluation.

Science moves slowly, especially if it flies-in-the-face of the funding that the university is receiving (from industrial ag).