Collecting the memories of the
pioneers of Tibetan Studies

The field of Tibetan Stud­ies is rel­at­ively young. Although Tibet has been by lim­ited aven­ues explored for sev­er­al cen­tur­ies, West­ern aca­dem­ic research has focused on Tibet mainly from the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tury, typ­ic­ally in search of Tibetan trans­la­tions of Indi­an and Buddhist treat­ises. Tibetan Stud­ies emerged as a unique aca­dem­ic dis­cip­line only dur­ing the 1960s and 1970s, when large num­bers of Tibetans fol­lowed the Dalai Lama into exile. 

This con­stel­la­tion brought schol­ars and many oth­ers into dir­ect con­tact with Tibetans and Tibetan cul­ture through the refugee com­munit­ies in India and the new wave of Tibetan migra­tion into west­ern coun­tries.

The devel­op­ment of Tibetan Stud­ies has also been inter­twined with West­ern trends such as the hip­pie cul­ture, the grow­ing pop­ular­ity of East­ern reli­gions, activ­it­ies of Tibetan reli­gious teach­ers in the West, and so on. There­fore, the his­tory of Tibetan Stud­ies is at the same time a pan­or­ama of West­ern soci­ety in these vibrant and col­our­ful decades.

In Asia, Tibetan Stud­ies has fol­lowed its own path, which we also aim to cov­er in this pro­ject. As the pro­ject ori­gin­ated in Europe, its focus has so far primar­ily been on Europe and the USA. We are try­ing our best to extend our scope to India, Japan, China, and Australia.

This pro­ject is run by a small group of volun­teer­ing PhD stu­dents in Europe and the USA, helped by friends all over the world. It all star­ted with the humble thought of record­ing the won­der­ful stor­ies and memor­ies that our teach­ers have shared with us and which we have bene­fit­ted so much from. We hope to col­lect these memor­ies in a format so that oth­ers in the future can have the oppor­tun­ity to hear the life stor­ies of all those who have come before us and paved the way.

The impetus to start was the sad passing of Elli­ot Sper­ling in Janu­ary 2017, to whom the pro­ject is partly ded­ic­ated. The shock­ing incent­ive to con­tin­ue was the passing of Tser­ing Dhun­dup Gonkat­sang, our beloved teach­er at Oxford, whom we lost in April 2018 only five days before a sched­uled inter­view he was so pas­sion­ate about. He is the second per­son to whom the pro­ject is dedicated.

Upon encour­age­ment, interest, and sup­port of oth­ers the ini­tial thought expan­ded and mater­i­al­ised into thou­sands of kilo­metres trav­elled, dozens of inter­views con­duc­ted, hun­dreds of hours of video and audio record­ings, and a small col­lec­tion of visu­al mater­i­al. Learn­ing on the way, being enthu­si­ast­ic but not pro­fes­sion­als, we apo­lo­gise in advance for any short­com­ings of our work.

We believe that prop­er appre­ci­ation of oral his­tory and per­son­al memor­ies is gained by record­ing, pre­serving, and shar­ing. We take this pro­ject as a trib­ute to all teach­ers of the past, present, and future.