[From Leipzig University Institute for South and Central Asian Studies news]
The Institute of South and Central Asian Studies at Leipzig University warmly welcomes Prof. Dr. Dagmar Schwerk as the new Professor for Tibetology, starting in October 2024.
Prof. Dr. Dagmar Schwerk, Foto: Feng Yang
The Institute of South and Central Asian Studies at Leipzig University warmly welcomes Prof. Dr. Dagmar Schwerk (she/her) as the new Professor for Tibetology, starting her position in October 2024. Prof. Schwerk’s research expertise covers the religious-doctrinal history and practices of Tibetan and Bhutanese Buddhism and the relationship between the societal spheres of religion, politics, law, and economics in the Tibetan cultural area. She is especially interested in sustainable development models and alternative modernity and secularity beyond Anglo-Euro-centric perspectives, the entangled history between Asia and Europe, and Buddhist ethics and activism in the climate crisis. Her work is located in the disciplinary field of Tibetology, focusing on text-critical and historical-philological methods/theories, Buddhist and religious studies, global history, and environmental humanities.
She received an M.A. in Tibetology, Classical Indology, and Political Science (2012) and a Ph.D. in Tibetology, both from Hamburg University, Germany (2017). Apart from Germany, she has studied, researched, and taught in Bhutan, India, Canada, and the UK. Before returning to Leipzig in 2022 with a Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religion at Leipzig University, Germany, she held a four-year teaching and research fellowship from the Khyentse Foundation at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and was Committee Member of the UBC Himalaya Program. She also received the Khyentse Foundation Award for Excellence in Buddhist Studies 2012.
Her teaching covers Tibetan language and literature, theories and methods in Tibetology and Buddhist studies, Tibetan and Bhutanese Buddhism, Tibetan material book culture, Buddhist ethics, the globalization of Buddhism, and Buddhism and film. Moreover, she addresses critical topics related to colonialism, indigeneity, and racism.
Please register for her exciting courses this term. In our new B.A. Cultures of South Asia and Tibet she will teach 03-SZA-0421 Tibetischer Buddhismus (open as an elective). Besides introducing the history, content, and practices of Tibetan Buddhism, this course will also cover critical topics such as gender and engaged Buddhism in the climate crisis. It also includes community-engaged and experiential learning formats. In 03-SZA-0405 Tibetisch V: Fortgeschrittene Lektüre/Readings Advanced Level, she will address one of the most important and longstanding debates of Tibetan intellectual history, the Mahāmudrā controversy from the viewpoint of the Bhutanese Drukpa-Kagyü school. With Prof. Dr. Jowita Kramer, she will co-teach 03-SZA-0420 Kultur und Literatur des Buddhismus (open as an elective). In our new M.A. Buddhist Studies and Contemplative Traditions, students will acquire essential knowledge about methods and sources/databases in the study and research of Buddhism and the contemplative traditions in India and Tibet in her teaching 03-SZA-1102/02 Methods and Sources I/II. She will address historical-philological, text-critical, (global) religious studies, and regional studies approaches and discuss selected critical aspects, such as gender, emic-etic distinctions, and archival and field work to cover the diversity of the three different foci of our M.A. program (without language skills/with language skills, interdisciplinary/with language skills, philological focus).
