Neel Kamal Chapagain joined the Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University in 2013 to develop the Master's program in Heritage Management, which eventually was launched in 2015. Along with his continuous role as a key faculty in the programme, he has been leading the Centre as its Director since 2017. Prior to joining Ahmedabad University, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (USA) as full-time teaching faculty and at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as a Doctoral Teaching Assistant. His professional journey spans Nepal, Bhutan, India, and the United States. He has co-edited a book titled Asian Heritage Management: Contexts, Concerns and Prospects(Routledge, 2013). He also coordinates a publication series from Nepal titled Reflections on the Built Environment and Associated Practices, of which the first volume was published in 2013, the second volume in 2016, and the third volume in 2019. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Heritage Management - a second academic milestone of the Centre for Heritage Management following the launch of the Master's programme, and has also been the conference chair for the series of International Conference on Heritage Management Education & Practice at Ahmedabad University. He also serves as the bureau member in the Asia Pacific Higher Education Network for Intangible Cultural Heritage (APHEN-ICH) as well as an executive committee member in the Asian Academy for Heritage Management (AAHM). Recently, he has been elected to the executive board of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies (ACHS). 

He has been a Visiting Fellow at the UNESCO Category 2 Centre on World Natural Heritage Management and Training at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun; a fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, and advisor to the Master of Science in Heritage Management at Wildlife Institute of India. He obtained his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), where his dissertation focused on rethinking cultural heritage conservation at traditional settlements. He also has an Architecture Doctorate and Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (USA), a professional conservation course at ICCROM in Italy, and B. Architecture from Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Nepal.