Anna Sehnalova

Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Modern Tibetan Studies

Email: as6492@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: Charles University, Prague
MPhil: University of Oxford
Mgr. (M.A.): Charles University, Prague

Research Interests

Anthropology/Ethnography, History

Tibetan and Himalayan Societies and Religions, Indigenous Cosmologies, Local Histories, Oral History, Tibetan Medicine and Science, Ritual

Anna Sehnalova explores cultural reflections of the natural world and environment through ethnography and textual and historical studies. Her first larger research project focused on Tibetan tantric healing practices in the medico-ritual nexus with an emphasis on botany, medicine, and other indigenous fields of knowledge and scientific disciplines. Her current main research seeks to better understand Tibetan non-Buddhist mountain and ancestor cosmologies closely tied to local histories and migrations, socio-political systems, and hereditary ruling elites, and specifically to notions of identity, territoriality and governance, ethnogenesis, descend, and genealogy. Anna studies their impacts on Tibetan Buddhism and interactions with Buddhist institutional powers, and their transformations and roles within modern contexts. Aiming to understand the background of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies as an independent academic discipline through recording the life stories of those involved, she has co-founded the ‘Oral History of Tibetan Studies’ project of Oxford University (https://oralhistory.iats.info/).