Chandra Chiara Ehm

Responsibilities

Chandra Chiara Ehm is trained in traditional Tibetan philosophy (dGe bshes ma Program) and received her Diplôme des Hautes Études in anthropology and Tibetan studies from the EPHE, Paris.

In her Diplôme-thesis, she focused on Tibetan nuns, their social and religious positioning, and how their marginalisation is challenged by an increasingly globalised and connected world.

Trained in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and in anthropology, Ms. Ehm is interested in Tibetan Buddhist monastic communities and their multifaceted realities. She looks at the monk, the nun, their institutional positioning, their philosophical studies, ritual, and how recent processes of social change, modernisation, and secularisation affect them in direct and indirect ways.

Her doctoral research “Yellow Hats, Indian Pandits, and Practice in the Geluk Order” focuses on scholasticism in Buddhist monastic communities and how these encounter processes of social change, modernisation, and secularisation affect them in direct and indirect ways.

In her doctoral research, the approach is interdisciplinary and comparative. She aims to combine a philological skillset to the philosophical texts, in particular of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra, with fieldwork in contemporary monastic communities in Tibet, Nepal, and India.

She also works on Tibetan women and nuns’ social and religious positioning and explores how their marginalisation is challenged in an increasingly globalised and connected world.