IIBS Research Fellow for the academic year 2008-2009

Orna Almogi, IIBS Research Fellow for the period September – November 2008, passed her PhD examinations in Tibetan Studies in 2006 at the University of Hamburg. Her thesis deals with the eleventh-century scholar Rong-zom Chos-kyi-bzang-po’s discourse on the various conceptions of Buddhahood found in Indian Buddhist sources, with special reference to the controversy on whether a buddha possesses gnosis. Currently she holds a postdoctoral research position at the Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Asia-Africa Institute of the University of Hamburg, where she is working on the “The Manuscript Collection of the Ancient Tantras (rNying ma rgyud ‘bum): An Examination of Variance,” within the interdisciplinary research project “Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa,” funded by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeischaft).