Short bio
Tsering Drongshar received a traditional Tibetan monastic education in Buddhist studies and literature at the Sakya College in Dehradun. He continued his studies of Tibetan history, grammar and literature at the Sarah College for Higher Tibetan Studies in Dharamsala. He holds both a bKa’ bcu pa degree and a Rig gnas rabs ’byams pa degree. He has worked as an editor for Tibetan publications of both classical and modern texts, and as a lecturer. He is an active Tibetan author, with articles appearing in various forums. He has also published two volumes of poetry. Moreover, he teaches Tibetan to the children of exiled Tibetans in Vienna.
From 2016 to 2018 Tsering Drongshar was part of the project “Visions of Community: Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE)” (VISCOM), an FWF Special Research Programme hosted by various institutes at the ÖAW. Within its framework he worked on a critical text edition of Mus srad pa rDo rje rgyal mtshan’s (1424–1498) Sa skya genealogy, the dPal ldan sa skya’i gdung rabs rin po che’i phreng ba. From 2018 to 2020, he then took part in the FWF project “The Scientific Legacy of René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz”.
Since 2020, he has been a collaborator at the ÖAW’s Institute for Social Anthropology in the project "Craft and craft traditions in Tibetan architecture," which is being funded by the ÖAW’s “Research, Science and Society” Innovation Fund.
In July 2021, Tsering Drongshar joined the research team of the ERC-funded project “The Dawn of Tibetan Buddhist Scholasticism (11th–13th c.)” (TibSchol) (CoG 101001002). His particular contribution will be to survey the early bKa’ gdams pa textual corpus, especially to identify scholars by examining colophons in the collection’s texts.
From August 2021, he will also be involved in the FWF project “Buddhist Narratives & ‘Tibetan’ Ethnogenesis” (P34212-G), in which he will review the contents of relevant primary Tibetan sources.
Recent academic publications
Drongshar, Tsering & Mathias Fermer, Annotated Catalogue of the Text Collection of René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1923–1959) at the Weltmuseum Wien. Universität Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien (forthcoming 2021).
Drongshar, Tsering & Christian Jahoda, The Extended Biography of the Royal Lama Ye shes ’od written by Pandita Grags pa rgyal mtshan: the Tibetan text. In: Christian Jahoda and Christiane Kalantari (eds.), Early West Tibetan Buddhist Monuments: Architecture, Art, History and Texts. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 121–169 (forthcoming).
Drongshar, Tsering & Christian Jahoda (eds.), Gu ge Tshe ring rgyal po, Relating the History of mNga’ ris as Set Down in Writing in Paṇḍita Grags pa rgyal mtshan’s Nyi ma’i rigs kyi rgyal rabs skye dgu’i cod paṇ nyi zla’i phreng dzes: The Tibetan Text (with variants and corrected readings edited by Tsering Drongshar and Christian Jahoda). In: Christian Jahoda and Christiane Kalantari (eds.) Early West Tibetan Buddhist Monuments: Architecture, Art, History and Texts. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 89–119 (forthcoming).