People

Holly Gayley , Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, conducts research on the revitalization of Buddhism on the Tibetan plateau with special interest in gender in hagiographic literature; ritual, ethics and identity politics; and Buddhist modernism. Her current research focuses on an emerging ethical reform movement in eastern Tibet, spearheaded by cleric-scholars at Larung Buddhist Academy in Serta, and her recent publications on the topic include: "Reimagining Buddhist...

Carole McGranahan , Professor in the Department of Anthropology, conducts research on culture, history, politics in the Tibetan refugee community, including on the citizens’ Chushi Gangdrug resistance army that fought against the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in the 1950s and 1960s, and on the twenty-first century politics of citizenship for Tibetan refugees in both South Asia and North America. She is the author of Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and...

Emily T. Yeh , Professor of Geography at CU Boulder, conducts research on nature-society relations in Tibetan parts of the PRC, including projects on conflicts over access to natural resources, the relationship between ideologies of nature and nation, the political ecology of pastoral environment and development policies, vulnerability of Tibetan herders to climate change, and emerging environmental subjectivities. Emily’s book Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development...

Natalie Avalos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies and Affiliate Faculty in the Religious Studies and Women and Gender Studies Departments. Dr. Avalos is an ethnographer of religion whose work in comparative Indigeneities explores urban Indian and Tibetan refugee religious life, healing historical trauma, and decolonial praxis. She received her doctorate from the University of California at Santa Barbara in Religious Studies with a special focus...

Dan Hirshberg, Associate Teaching Professor in the Center for Asian Studies, teaches courses in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies, often relying on high-impact practices and contemplative pedagogy. He completed his BA in Religion at Wesleyan University, his MA in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (Shedra Track) at Naropa University, his PhD in Tibetan Studies at Harvard University, and has held fellowships at UC Santa Barbara, LMU Munich, and UVa’s Contemplative Sciences Center. Before moving...

Jules Levinson earned a doctoral degree in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, where he studied under the guidance of Jeffrey Hopkins, a foremost figure in the field of Buddhist Studies. He now lives in Boulder, CO, where he translates literature and oral commentary concerned with the Middle Way (mādhyamika) and the Great Seal (mahāmudrā) as they are known in Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. For many years he...

Padma 'tsho (Baimacuo) is Professor in the Philosophy Department of Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu, China. She holds a Ph.D. from Sichuan University in Chengdu and M.A. from Central Nationalities University in Beijing. She was an Instructor at Front Range Community in 2016-2017. She has published about 50 articles in several languages and two books. Her areas of research and teaching include Tibetan Buddhism, ritual, and culture, as well...

Phurwa is a PhD candidate in Geography working with Dr. Emily Yeh. He is receiving graduate training in political ecology, critical development studies, and Indigenous geographies. His research examines intersecting questions of state-making, Indigeneity, and multispecies worldmaking; specifically, as they transpire in contestations over yartsa gunbu at the interface of inter/national conservation agendas, climate change, and Indigenous environmental governance in Dolpo, Nepal.

Anden Drolet, a PhD student in cultural anthropology, studies in Central Bhutan. His research interests look at the intersection of Gross National Happiness, development and local frameworks of well-being.

Tracy Fehr is a Sociology PhD student whose research interests include international human rights and women’s rights, gender, social movements, and transitional justice in the context of Nepal. Tracy has a Master’s in International Studies and she has worked in Washington D.C. on African human rights issues and, most recently, in Kathmandu as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Crisis Management Studies and as a Field Research Consultant...

Drolma Gadou is currently a MA student in Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research interests center around transnational commodity chains, urbanization, development, infrastructure, gender, and health. Drolma received her BA in International Comparative Studies and certificate in Global Health from Duke University. Before her graduate study, Drolma has worked at a social enterprise in Shanghai; she later served as the project manager and the deputy chief of...

Palchen Gyal is from eastern Tibet. He completed his undergraduate degree in the field of Tibetan medicine at the Tibetan Medical College of the Qinghai University, China. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in religious studies at University of Colorado Boulder. His interests include Buddhist tantric healing rituals as a way to see the historical and contemporary interaction between Tibetan Buddhism and medicine.

Tsering Lhamo is a Ph.D. student in Geography. Coming from interdisciplinary background in international development and global health, Tsering’s research interests center on the intersections of sustainable development, political ecology, and transnational trade within the frontiers of the Himalayan states.

Yuxiang Lin is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology. His research interests focus on infrastructural projects on Sino-Nepalese border, questioning how infrastructure shapes politics

Dawa Lokyitsang is a Tibetan-American Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Anthropology. Her dissertation is about the establishment of sovereignty in exile by the Tibetan refugee collective following China’s invasion of Tibet in 1959. She looks specifically at the development of Tibetan educational institutions and the making of kinship in India as avenues for securing Tibetan continuity and futurity as the invasion transitioned into a full-scale settler colonial occupation. As such, her...

Adi Prakash is a documentary filmmaker, journalist and PhD student in Cultural Anthropology, with research interests in activism, cultural revivalism and language ideologies among the Lepcha in Sikkim in India’s eastern Himalaya. Adi received his BA in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai in 2012 and has an MA in Development Studies from The Tata Institute of Social Sciences ('14) and an MS in Journalism from The Medill School of...

Tenzin Yangkey is a Ph.D. student in Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research interest lies in the interaction of climate change, tourism, and land use change in the trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh. Her master’s research focused on climate change impacts on Tibetan refugee pastoralists based in Ladakh, India. Building on her diverse educational background of an MA in Geography at the University of Arizona and a B.Sc...

Drew Zackary , a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology, researches the effect conservation areas have on people living within them. Currently his field site is the Kachenjunga Conservation Area in northeast Nepal. Questions about decentralization, land tenure, ethnic identity and perceptions development are of importance in his current fieldwork. Drew has done previous work on biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and livelihood in Uganda and Idaho. He received a M.A...

Tenzin Tsepak, Instructor of Tibet and Himalayan Studies at the Center for Asian Studies, conducts research on Tibetan history, literature, and culture, with a special interest in Indic poetics in Tibet from the thirteenth till the late eighteenth centuries.

Somtsobum received an MA in Religious Studies. Her academic research interests lied in theories of religion, gender, history and memory. Her research interests include Buddhist modernism in Tibet, pilgrimage, as well as monastic centers in Amdo. She is currently a PhD student working with Dr. Sarah Jacoby at Northwestern University .

Tshebe (Caibei) received her PhD in 2010 from Minzu University of China in Beijing. She studies Tibetan cultural history and conducts research on the Tibetan landscape and Holy Land. Her doctoral dissertation explored a very old Mountain Spirit or Local Deity called ‘A-Myes-Rma-Chen’, particularly its role and symbolic significance in Tibetan society in the pre-Buddhist period. Tshebe currently focuses on landscape transformation in Himalayan areas, and has an interest in...

Mason Brown completed his PhD in Ethnomusicology, focusing primarily on Tibetan music and culture in Nepal, with an eye toward overlaps between liturgical music and contemporary popular forms, as well as rural folk traditions. His other research interests include Japanese Buddhist chant, American and Irish vernacular fiddle music, and violin manufacturing in the Industrial Revolution. Mason holds a double B.A. in Religious Studies and Music, with a minor in Tibetan...

Marielle Butters received her PhD in Linguistics. She works within the Tibeto-Burman family, particularly in the subfields of language documentation, historical linguistics and linguistic anthropology. Her research interests include negation, evidential systems and language in post-colonial settings.

Jessica DiCarlo graduated with a PhD from the Geography Department at CU Boulder. Her research interests lie in critical development studies, political ecology, infrastructure studies and polical geography. Her fascination with the Himalayan region was sparked nearly a decade ago as a Princeton-in-Asia fellow. Since, she has lived and worked in China, eastern Tibet, Nepal and India with research institutions and NGOs. Jessica earned an MA in Development Studies from...

Renée Ford completed her PhD at Rice University with a specialization in Tibetan Buddhism emphasizing sūtric and tantric meditation practices of the rNying ma tradition. Her other research interests include performative and ritual theory, embodiment, cognitive sciences of religion, and Tibetan Buddhist epistemology. Renée also holds a M.A. in Buddhist studies with Sanskrit and Tibetan Language from Nāropa University. Prior to her graduate studies at Rice University, Renée worked as...

Sierra Gladfelter graduated with a MA in Geography in 2017. Beginning in August 2017, Sierra's Fulbright-Nehru research project will examine opportunities for local adaptive strategies and technocratic interventions led by the Indian government to collaboratively address the impacts of climate-induced disasters in Uttarakhand and Ladakh. Specifically, she is investigating how rural communities have historically coped with floods and droughts and mitigated their effects locally as well as what current barriers...

Andrew Grant (PhD 2016, UCLA) is a political geographer. His research on the effects of urbanization on Tibetans in Western China was supported by a Fulbright Hays Dissertation Research Fellowship. The journals Geographical Review and Asian Ethnicity have published his research. Andrew is currently writing a book about urbanization on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Boston College .

Bhumshik Gyal completed his MA in the Department of Religious Studies in 2023 at University of Colorado, Boulder. His research interests are theories of religion, Buddhist economy, and Buddhist modernism. He is also interested in classical Tibetan studies and documentary film. He received his BA in Tibetan language and literature from Northwest Minzu University, China (2018).

Ben Joffe, who is from South Africa, received his PhD in cultural anthropology specializing in the anthropology of contemporary Tibet, Tibetan diaspora, Buddhism, and esotericism. His doctoral dissertation research is focused on Tibetan Buddhist non-celibate tantric ritual specialists, or ngakpa/ma who live outside of Tibet, and the globalization of Tibetan Buddhism. His work traces how the esoteric knowledge and charisma of these long-haired tantric Buddhist wizards is currently being mediated,...

Adam Krug completed his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies and South Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His current research focuses on the Grub pa sde bdun or Seven Texts on Siddhi , a corpus of Indian tantric treatises from seven mahāsiddhas extant in Sanskrit and Tibetan that are recognized as one of the oldest corpuses of Indian mahāmudrā works. This research...

Dolma Kyab is a Tibetan instructor who taught Tibetan grammar, history, and literature in Tibet for many years. He grew up in Amdo, Tibet and received two degrees, in Tibetan Literature and later in Chinese law. He is now a Tibetan writer and historian actively working on various literary projects. He is experienced in Chinese, Tibetan, and English. He lives in Westminster with his wife and, in his free time,...

Sara Lindblom completed her MA in the Department of Religious Studies. After completing her BA from Naropa University she studied Classical Tibetan and Buddhist philosophy at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her research focuses on the emergence of Tibet’s literary ‘renaissance’ between the 10th and 14th century. Her specific interests revolve around the works of the Nyingma scholar and master Kunkhyen Longchen Rabjam including his literary and spiritual legacy...

Ariana Maki taught courses on Buddhist visual culture and contemporary Tibetan art for History of Art and Religious Studies, among other topics. Her research interests include the relationships between text, politics and visual representation, the development of Himalayan visual arts, and the intersections of art and ritual. She is co-author and editor of Artful Contemplation: Collections from the National Museum of Bhutan (2014) and recently completed editing of a pilgrimage...

Galen Murton received his PhD in geography and is an Assitant Professor in Geographic Science at James Madison University . With over 200 undergraduate students as well as several dozen international graduate students, the Geographic Science Program is one of JMU’s rapidly expanding degree programs. Hired specifically as an instructor of human geography, my classroom training and teaching experiences at CU Geography were fundamental to achieving this professional goal. In...

Sonam Nyenda completed his MA in Religious Studies with a specialization in Bhutanese Buddhism. His primary research interest in this area concerned, among others, tantric rituals, the significance of art and iconography and their function within ritual and practice, and tantric ritual manuals. He worked on the Vajrakila tradition of Sumthrang Sumdrup Chodzong Gompa (est. 1228 AD) in central Bhutan. Sonam examined in particular the art and Kangsoel ritual, which...

Chu Paing, originally from Myanmar, is a PhD student in Cultural Anthropology, and an aspiring linguistic anthropologist. Her research interests include ethnography, majority/minority language dynamics, language and politics, language and identity, language maintenance and shift, language socialization, narrative, storytelling, Burmese, and Tibeto-Burman languages of Myanmar. She graduated from Queens College, The City University of New York, with a Bachelor Degree in General Linguistics in the Spring of 2017. Chu's undergraduate...

Lhoppön Rechung began his religious training at the age of five at Palyul Chö Khor Ling monastery. There, he trained until the age of fourteen under Lama Chöying Gyamtso, a Kagyu lama. From the age of fourteen to eighteen, he studied at the Sakya Dzongsar Institute under Khenpo Kunga Wangchuk, after which he spent two years at the Gelug Drepung University. At the age of twenty, Lhoppön Rechung Rinpoche entered...

Alessandro Rippa was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Asian Studies at CU Boulder where he researched infrastructure development and cross-border trade along the China-Myanmar border. He completed his doctorate in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen with a dissertation on the Karakoram Highway and China-Pakistan cross-border interactions. Prior to joining the Center for Asian Studies, he was a postdoctoral fellow at LMU Munich, part of the European...

Richa Shakya graduated with a MA in Geography. Her research interests included gender, migration, and mobility in Nepal. She researched the various implications of human agencies when it comes to women's identity versus the expectations of gendered roles for married Nepali women.

Joshua Shelton completed his MA in Religious Studies in 2019. After receiving his MDiv in Buddhism from Naropa University, Joshua came up the hill to continue developing his scholarly interest in queer theory, gender studies, and theories of religion. His research focuses on the gendered dimensions of tantric ritual, narrative, and ideology in Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism, with particular interest in the ethical dimensions of tantric masculinities. He is currently a...

Rupak Shrestha , an Assistant Professor in School for Internatinal Studies and the Global Asia Program at Simon Fraser Univrsity in Vancouver, Canada. He did his PhD in the Department of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder. His researches primarily investigate extraterritorial sovereignty, citizenship, and territory in spaces (re)produced by the politics of development. He is interested in understanding how people are rendered powerless through state mechanisms, and the ways in...

Sam (Selma K.) Sonntag recently retired from Humboldt State University in northern California. She has joined the Department of Political Science here at the University of Colorado, Boulder as an affiliate professor, teaching courses on South and Southeast Asia. She completed her undergraduate degree in 1978 in South Asia Regional Studies at the University of Washington, continuing at the same institution for her Ph.D. in Political Science. Her primary research...

Stephanie Spray was an Assistant Professor in Critical Media Practices at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is currently an Associate Professor of Anthropology & Cinematic arts at the University of Southern California. She is an active filmmaker and anthropologist whose work lies at the intersection of ethnography and art, with research interests in social aesthetics; visual, sonic, and media anthropology; climate change and the anthropology of science, especially oceanic...

Dorje Tashi (Duojie Zhaxi) graduated with a PhD in Geography in 2020. He is an Assitant Professor in the Department of Tourism at Qinghai Minzu University. He researches primarily the intersection of environmentalism, agriculture, and culture on the Tibetan Plateau. Dorje earned his Associate Degree (Tibetan and English) at Qinghai Normal University in China, and received his MA in Environmental Education from Miriam College, the Philippines. Dorje has worked for...

Dr. Namgyal Tseten is an Associate Professor at the School of Chinese Ethnic Minority Languages and Literatures at the Minzu University of China. His main research interests are translation in Tibet, Sino-Tibetan translation, and translation criticism. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder.

Eben Yonnetti graduated with an MA in Religious Studies. He will be continuing his research on contemporary Tibetan Buddhist translation and transmission during a Fulbright IIE and PhD program in Religious Studies. During his Fulbright, Eben will study how Tibetan Buddhist teachings and practices are mobilized to support environmental stewardship projects in response to climate change. Investigating several innovative environmental projects spearheaded by religious leaders in Ladakh, India through ethnographic...