Dominique Townsend is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism whose research combines historical and literary methods. Her interests include Tibetan Buddhist cultural production, poetry, aesthetics, dreams, gender, and translation. Her research is rooted primarily in Classical Tibetan texts, with an emphasis on the seventeenth-twentieth centuries. She teaches courses on Tibetan Buddhism and history, Asian humanities, poetics, new media, dreaming, and Buddhist approaches to death and dying. Before joining the faculty at Columbia in July 2024, she was Associate Professor of Religion at Bard College, and prior to that she served as Head of Interpretation at the Rubin Museum of Art.

Research Interests

Currently Townsend’s research is focused on a book about dreams and dreaming in Tibetan Buddhism, All this is Dreamlike, forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Her previous books include A Buddhist Sensibility (Columbia University Press, 2021), and the co-edited, Longing to Awaken, (University of Virginia Press, 2024). She has also published a book of poems and a children’s book.