Panel Speaker Bios:

David Germano

In addition to teaching in the Department of Religious Studies, where he has advised many doctoral students since 1992, Germano is director of the Tibet Center (www.uvatibetcenter.org), director of the Contemplative Sciences Center (www.uvacontemplation.org), and director of SHANTI (Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts Network of Technological Initiatives, www.shanti.virginia.edu) at the University of Virginia. He also is the founder and director of the Tibetan and Himalayan Library (THL, www.thlib.org), the largest international initiative using digital technology to facilitate collaboration in Tibetan Studies across disciplines.​

His personal research interests are focused on the Nyingma and Bön lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, tantric traditions overall, Buddhist philosophy, and Tibetan historical literature and concerns, particularly from the eighth to fifteenth centuries. He also does research on the contemporary state of Tibetan religion in relationship to China, and non-monastic yogic communities in cultural Tibet, and has broad intellectual interests in international philosophical and literary traditions, including hermeneutics, phenomenology, literary criticism, systems theory, and so forth.

Geoffrey Samuel

Geoffrey Samuel is Emeritus Professor at Cardiff University, Wales, U.K. and Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, Australia. His academic career has been in social anthropology and religious studies. Current research interests include Tibetan healing and medical practices, and the dialogue between Buddhism and science. He is the author of Mind, Body and Culture (1990), Civilized Shamans (1993), Tantric Revisionings (2005), The Origins of Yoga and Tantra (2008) and Introducing Tibetan Buddhism (2012). His most recent publications are the co-edited volumes About Padmasambhava (with Jamyang Oliphant; Garuda Verlag, 2020) and Hidden Lands in Himalayan Myth and History (with Frances Garrett and Elizabeth MacDougal; Brill, 2020), and the translation Another End of the World is Possible (Polity, 2020).