Thinley Gyatso is a doctoral candidate in the Department for the Study of Religion. After receiving his BA in history from Loyola College (Chennai, 2012), he did his MA in history from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU New Delhi, 2014). The Masters dissertation he wrote was entitled “Christianity and Buddhism, Dialogue and Dilemma: a historical perspective.” Subsequently he received an MPhil in history from JNU (2016) with his thesis entitled “Mobility, Space, and Identity: Tibetan Nomadism in Eastern Kham, c.1880s-1980s,” which was a look into the questions of religion and cultural identity and the historical dialogue of Buddhist practices and cultural narrativities in trans-Himalayan regions. Later he spent more than a year teaching as an assistant professor of history at the Centre for the Teachers’ Education, Central University of Tibetan Studies, Varanasi (2016-2017).
While studying at JNU, Thinley presented a number of papers at various academic forums such as 14th Seminar of International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS 2016) Norway, Annual American Anthropology and Ethnological Society Conference, Stanford University (2017), and 3rd and 4th Symposium in Memory of Professor Dawa Norbu, JNU. His wider research interests lie primarily in the area of historical studies of Trans-Himalayan regions: understanding theoretical and methodological problems in dealing with the hermeneutics of Buddhist studies and the dialogue of current religious practices and historical narratives. Thinley is a recipient of the Phool Maya Chen Award in Buddhist Studies and the Dalai Lama Graduate Award 2020-2021.
