Editors and Contributors
Ian Baker
(PhD, History, University of Strathclyde, 2020) was honoured by National Geographic Society as one of seven “explorers for the millennium” for his ethno-geographical field research in Tibet’s Tsangpo gorges and his team’s documentation of a waterfall that had been the source of geographical speculation for more than a century, and which Tibetans describe as the portal to the innermost realm of sBas yul Padma bkod, the ‘Hidden Land Arrayed Like Lotuses’. He is the author of seven books on Himalayan and Tibetan cultural history, environment, art, and medicine, including The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet’s Lost Paradise, which chronicles his research on the Himalayan phenomena of ‘hidden-lands’ (sbas yul) from a variety of perspectives. Baker has also contributed articles and photography to National Geographic Magazine, as well as written for academic journals and publications.
Hildegard Diemberger
(PhD, Social Anthropology and Tibetology, University of Vienna 1992) is the Research Director of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) at University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. She has published numerous books and articles on the anthropology and the history of Tibet and the Himalaya, including the monograph When a Woman becomes a Religious Dynasty: the Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (Columbia University Press 2007) and the edited volume Tibetan Printing – Comparisons, Continuities and Change (Brill 2016). She is currently the general secretary of the International Association for Tibetan Studies.
Franz-Karl Ehrhard
(PhD University of Hamburg, 1987) was Resident Representative of the Nepal Research Center and the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation in Kathmandu (Nepal) from 1988–1993, member of the German Research Council (DFG) priority program “State Formation and Settlement Processes in the Himalaya” in 1993-1998, and Research Fellow at the Lumbini International Research in Bhairahawa (Nepal) in 1998–2003. Since 2003 he has been Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. His research work centres on the religious and literary traditions of Tibet and the Himalayas. Recent publications include Buddhism in Tibet & the Himalayas: Texts and Traditions (Vajra Publications, 2013) and the co-edited volume Tibetan Printing: Comparisons, Continuities and Change (Brill, 2016).
Frances Garrett
(PhD, Buddhist Studies, University of Virginia, 2004) is Associate Professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her research has examined the intersections between tantric practice, ritual and occult knowledge and medical theory; she has also worked on the King Gesar epic and is currently studying contemporary and historical stories about Mount Khangchendzonga in Sikkim. She is the author of Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet (Routledge 2008), co-editor of Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society (International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH, 2010), and she is now editing a volume on the King Gesar epic.
Tom Greensmith
graduated with a MPhil in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies from Oxford University in 2018. His completed dissertation focused on the “non-sectarian” (ris med) figure of the Fifth Sle lung bZhad pa’i rdo rje (1697–1740) and his journey to Padma bkod in 1729 which was awarded the Sangwa Yeshe prize for best dissertation. Tom has spent over six years working and studying in Asia culminating in a months’ field trip to the hidden land (sbas yul) of Yolmo in Nepal exploring the region’s sacred sites.
Kerstin Grothmann
is a PhD candidate in the Central Asian Seminar, Institute of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin. Between 2007 and 2009 she conducted research in Arunachal Pradesh (India) among the Memba community of Mechukha (West Siang District), as well as initial research among the Memba of Pemakö (Upper Siang District). Her research focuses on narratives of migration and settlement history, the community’s social organisation, and their territorial and economic practices in the context of shifting territorial rule and geo-political changes. She is author of the book “Wie der süße Duft der Blumen” - Die Arshe. Eine Untersuchung von Arbeitsliedern aus dem traditionellen tibetischen Bauhandwerk (Harrassowitz, 2011).
Amelia Hall
is an assistant professor in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism in the Religious Studies Program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. She received her doctorate in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies from the University of Oxford in 2012. Her doctoral dissertation, Revelations of a Modern Mystic: The Life and Legacy of Kun bzang bde chen gling pa 1928–2006, translates and reflects upon the life of this Buddhist visionary and on the influence of his Healing Chöd system in the West. Amelia Hall currently teaches courses on Buddhism and Tibetan language at Naropa University, as well as directing research projects for the Naksang Foundation, an organization focused on research projects and cultural exchange in remote areas of North East India. She is also the co-developer of an annual conference titled Wisdom Rising: An Exploration of the Divine Feminine in Buddhism at Shambhala Mountain Center, and a contributor to the forthcoming Oxford Encyclopaedia of Buddhism.
Barbara Hazelton
is a doctoral student in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. She has a BA in Fine Art History and an MA in Buddhist Studies. Her doctoral research focuses on Tibetan epic literature and performance. She has lived for many years with Tibetan communities in Asia and Canada and is a practicing artist studying with a Tibetan painter in Toronto. She also has a background in Tibetan visual imagery and ritual through years of study with Tibetan scholars and ritual specialists.
Annie Heckman
is a doctoral student in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. After receiving her MFA in Studio Art (New York University, 2006), Annie worked in the visual arts for several years, teaching at DePaul University and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. After studying Tibetan language through the University of Chicago’s Graham School, she relocated to Toronto and has since participated in research teams whose work focuses on Tibetan language, digital humanities, and Dunhuang manuscripts. Her research explores depictions of labour and construction craft across genres in pre-modern Tibet.
Jon Kwan
is a multimedia artist working with film, music, VR and the latest tech to create works inspired by Buddhist teachings, with a particular interest in sacred sites. He has completed projects in India, Nepal, Mongolia and his work has appeared at the Mind & Life ESRI event, the V&A museum and many Dharma centres. He is particularly interested in exploring the power of sound and its potential to affect consciousness.
Elizabeth McDougal
is a Canadian doctoral student at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on the practice lineages of Eastern Tibet, particularly that of a nuns’ community in Nangchen, and their responses to a rapidly modernizing worldview in China since the 1980s. Her research also connects to changes in the ethos of sbas yul culture since the beginning of the 20th century, as well as to modern adaptations of Vajrayāna practices under the influence of scientific understanding. She lived as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in India and Tibet for eighteen years, completing a Masters in Indian philosophy at Banaras Hindu University and a Master of Art’s dissertation at the University of Sydney. She has worked as an English translator since 2006 (from Central Tibetan and Nangchen dialects), focusing on texts and oral presentations of Gebchak Gonpa’s tantric practice tradition, as well as the terma guidebooks of the Pemakö tertön, Drakngak Lingpa. Several of her translations have been published, as well as an abridged version of her Master’s dissertation, and she has contributed chapters to a Springer book on science and Vajrayāna due for publication in 2019.
Callum Pearce
is an anthropologist currently employed as an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for the Study of Religion. He completed his PhD at Aberdeen in 2017 with a thesis focusing on spirits, landscape and perception among Buddhist laity in Ladakh. This was based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Leh valley and central Zangskar. Prior to this he studied at the University of Oxford and the University of London (UCL and SOAS).
Geoffrey Samuel
is Emeritus Professor at Cardiff University, Wales, U.K. and Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he directs the Body, Health and Religion (BAHAR) Research Group. His academic career has been in social anthropology and religious studies. His current research interests include Tibetan yogic health practices, Tibetan medicine, and the dialogue between Buddhism and science. His authored books include Mind, Body and Culture (1990), Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (1993), Tantric Revisionings (2005), The Origins of Yoga and Tantra (2008) and Introducing Tibetan Buddhism (2012). He has co-edited seven books, the most recent being Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West: Between Mind and Body (Routledge, 2013), Monastic and Lay Traditions in North-Eastern Tibet (Brill, 2013) and Buddhism, International Relief Work and Civil Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and seven special journal issues. He was also co-editor of the Brill journal Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity from 2008 to 2013.
Samuel Thévoz
is associate researcher at Université Paris 3 Sorbonne nouvelle, UMR 7172 - THALIM (Théorie et histoire des arts et des littératures de la modernité). For his PhD (University of Lausanne, 2008) he studied the perception and representation of landscape by French explorers to Tibet. In his subsequent work, his research focused on the perception of Tibet in travel literature, academia, and esotericism; modern Buddhism in global literary and theater histories; the first travels of Tibetans and Asian Buddhists to France and Europe. He is the author of Un horizon infini: Explorateurs et voyageurs français au Tibet (1846–1912). Paris: University Press of Paris-Sorbonne, 2010. He also edited the re-print of Marie de Ujfalvy-Bourdon, Voyage d’une Parisienne dans l’Himalaya, Paris: Transboréal, 2014 and the unpublished novel of Alexandra David-Neel, Le Grand Art, Paris: Le Tripode, 2018.
Lama Urgyen Gyalpo
is an accomplished painter and ritual specialist in the Karma Gadri or “encampment” style of Buddhist sacred painting. He received his formal artistic training in traditional Tibetan Buddhist arts and thang ka painting from 1996 to 2006 at the renowned Tsering Art School in Kathmandu, Nepal, under one of the most highly respected and esteemed painting masters of today, Venerable Konchog Ladrepa. Since then, he has traveled widely through India, Thailand, Singapore and the US working on restoration of old works and the creation of new works. He now lives in Toronto, Canada.