NCID-0919
Sangseraima Ujeed
Assistant Professor of Tibetan Buddhism
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Education/Degree:
1 Oriental Studies (University of Oxford)
About
Sangseraima Ujeed is an assistant professor of Tibetan Buddhism at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan. She defended a doctorate degree in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies from the University of Oxford in 2018 where she had previously completed her masters degree in the same program. She is primarily a textual scholar working in classical Tibetan and Mongolian languages. Her interest in the study of the Tibetan Buddhist world was sparked by her own identity as an insider of the tradition and the marginalized position of the Mongols within the current academic field of Tibetan Buddhist Studies.
Current Work
She is currently working on her first book manuscript which aims to decenter the field of Tibetan Buddhism away from its imagined exclusivity to geographical Tibet and the Himalayas. By rewriting the popular history of the origin of the Dalai Lamas by examining unexplored and understudied historical writing authored by ethnically Mongolian Tibetan Buddhists, her book will reveal the pathways of entanglement between the Himalayas and Inner Asia that ultimately moulded the wider Tibetan Buddhist world. In doing so, transregional identity formation, knowledge networks, and the role of reincarnation in the formation of institutions will be highlighted. This project is primarily based on Tibetan and Mongolian language Buddhist writing from the early modern period authored by ethnically Mongolian monk-scholars and nobility. As well as literary sources, this project also integrates relevant oral histories, legends, and material culture.