Ph.D. candidate, E.P.H.E. (France)
His Masters and postgraduate studies (DEA) focused on the history of a Tibetan scholar from eastern Tibet, Si tu chos kyi ’byung gnas (1700-1774), as well as on historiographic issues.
His PhD research aims at giving an account of political, economic, social and religious transformations which affected the kingdom of sDe dge (eastern Tibet), from the middle of the XVIIth to the end of the XVIIIth century, and of the politics run by local authorities to form a major religious pole capable of competing with Central Tibet. To carry this research project to a successful conclusion and to present a global history of the kingdom from the middle of the XVIIth to the end of the XVIIIth century, he applies various scales of analysis: long term and microhistory. This type of approach, very rarely adopted up to now as regards the history of Tibet, is made possible by the wealth and relative diversity of Tibetan and Chinese sources, kept over this period. In addition to written sources and fieldwork, he also uses a vast corpus of figurative documents: sculptures, wall paintings from royal foundations, canvasses representing characters from the kingdom, iconography of xylographed texts published under royal patronage...
This global history project on an ancient Tibetan kingdom, which has never previously been undertaken, also leads him to contemplate various central aspects of Tibetan culture and institutions: royalty, kingship in its relation to the religious sphere, the political and territorial organisation of Tibetan kingdoms, the role of religious masters and religious institutions in the transmission of material and conceptual heritage (printing ...), political power and trade circuits.