Team

Damien Boltauzer

Damien is an undergraduate in Anthropology at the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He has a deep interest in religious/sacred spaces and geographies in the Himalayan Buddhist world. He has conducted research with the KCC in Sikkim and also in Ladakh, and he is now studying for a year in Kathmandu.

Anna Balikci Denjongpa

Anna has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is a Canadian citizen now working in Sikkim as NIT Research Coordinator and editor of the Bulletin of Tibetology. An anthropologist whose research interests centre on Sikkim’s indigenous cultures, history and the medium of ethnographic film, her doctoral research was funded by SSHRC (1994-1998) and later published as Lamas, Shamans and Ancestors: Village Religion in Sikkim (Brill 2008). Since 2003 she has directed the Sikkim Video Archive, a collaborative visual anthropology project producing a documented audio-visual record of indigenous Sikkimese cultures with a focus on ritual. With her local research team she has completed a series of eight ethnographic films on Sikkim’s indigenous Lepcha and Bhutia communities, which have been screened at several film festivals worldwide. She is currently working on a book on the history of Sikkim.

Frances Garrett

Frances’ research has examined the intersections between tantric practice, ritual and occult knowledge and medical theory, and what these tell us about the processes of institutional and ideological change in Tibet. She has also worked on the Tibetan King Gesar epic. Most recently in her teaching, with a team of colleagues and students she has developed an online Classical Tibetan language course, and she is co-founder (with Matt Price) of University of Toronto Outdoors.

Dakpa Gyatso Acharya

Dakpa Gyatso Acharya is a native Tibetan translator and researcher. He studied at the Central University of Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, majoring Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan language, where he earned the Shastri [BA] and Acharya degrees [MA]. After completion of the Acharya degree, he served as the personal secretary to Gyetrul Jigme Rinpoche, son of Terton Namkha Drimed Rabjam Rinpoche. During his work, he also served as the head of the Ripa Private Office and translator of Terton Namkha Rinpoche. He travelled extensively with Gyetrul Jigme Rinpoche in this capacity.

Dakpa has translated and edited numerous articles and books including the “Activities of Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in the West,” the Historical and Religious Life of the King Gesar of Ling [Tibetan], the entire cycle of Tagsham Samten Lingpa’s treasure-teachings (termas) for International Nyingma Buddhist Encyclopedia, the Ripa Buddhist Monastic Code, Odisha Buddhist Connection and so on. Dakpa has been working on his own book-in-progress: the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibetan-Sanskrit-English and its commentary.

In 2014, he came to Nova Scotia, Halifax, where he lived for three years working with Nalanda Translation Committee. In April 2017, he moved to Toronto along with his wife and daughter. Currently, he lives in Toronto working with Prof. Frances Garrett; he also works for Nalanda Translation Committee, and the Berzin Archive e.V. as a translator and editor.

Faraz Khoshbakhtian

Faraz Khoshbakhtian is currently an undergraduate student of Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He became a part of Himalayan Borderlands team in September of 2018. He is keen in exploring new strategies of improving web literacy around the world.

Molly Mignault

Molly is a graduate student at the University of Toronto in the Department for the Study of Religion where she is doing a collaborative specialization with the School of the Environment. Her research interests are focused on the relationship between environmental preservation and natural sacred sites within South Asia. She received an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto in 2017 where she studied religious studies, environmental studies and geography.

Matt Price

As a historian of science and technology, Matt has been interested in the social impacts of technologies his whole adult life. His interest in digital technology emerged partly out of his research (especially on early cybernetics, in the 1950s and 1960s) and partly from his practical engagement teaching technical skills to kids and people in social housing. HIs hope in much of his teaching is that students come away, first, with a sense of how digital technologies can both enhance and diminish what some philosophers have called “human flourishing” and others “emancipation”; and second, equipped with the tools they need to help nudge our society along in the right direction.

Khenpo Kunga Sherab

Khenpo Kunga joined the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto as a PhD student in 2016. His research is in the area of contemporary Tibetan Buddhist scholars’ engagement with science with a particular interest in Buddhist and contemporary scientific theories of consciousness, karma and reincarnation.

He received an MA, also from the DSR, in 2014. Khenpo has worked at the DSR since 2009 both as a course instructor of Tibetan language and as a Research Consultant, assisting with student and faculty research and teaching in Tibetan Studies.

Before coming to the University of Toronto, Khenpo received a traditional Tibetan Buddhist monastic education and earned the advanced title of Khenpo (abbot) in 2005 from the Dzongsar Institute for Advanced Studies of Buddhist Philosophy and Research in India. He then taught for many years at Dzongsar Institute, India and Zurmang Buddhist College in Sikkim, India. He is the author of several works on Buddhist philosophy in Tibetan.

Laila Stradz

Laila is a graduate student at the University of Toronto in the Adult Education and Community Development program with a collaborative specialization in Environmental Studies. She received my Honours Bachelor of Science in Psychology and have a keen interest in researching the psychological motivators for pro-environmental behaviours. It was through experiences such as international exchanges to Germany and Australia and working with the City of Toronto in municipal politics that she realized the importance of experiential and community-engaged learning.

Dawn Walker

Dawn Walker is a PhD student at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on how values are negotiated in the design of emerging alternative and “decentralized” web and internet infrastructures. She also imagines possibilities for grassroots and decentralized (environmental) data with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) and Data Together. She completed her Master’s of Information at the University of Toronto in 2016. Dawn also hold an Honours Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in Philosophy and History.