Gurmeet Kaur, postdoctoral resident at Iméra until December 2025, will present her research as part of the workshop entitled ‘Telling Her Story, Telling Herstory. Exploring Tibetan Buddhist Cultures Through the Prism of Women’s History’ at the University of Bern.
November 14th & 15th 2025
In recent decades, there has been a significant shift toward critical social and historical studies of Tibetan Buddhist cultures. This transformation has been especially notable in the fields of women’s and gender studies. While gender studies have played a crucial role in diversifying approaches, replies to the persistent questions concerning women’s histories and lived realities remain a desideratum. In today’s multifaceted discourse, fundamental feminist queries invite for renewed reflection: Who speaks for whom and why? Who tells women’s history – and how, precisely, can we tell women’s history today?
Registration is required to attend this international workshop.
- Send an e-mail to dolores.bertschinger (at) unibe.ch by 8 November.
Negotiating Voice and Authority. Tibetan Women‘s Lives and the Construction of Herstory
Gurmeet Kaur is taking part in the second round table on November 14th (1:30pm-3:30pm) on historical perspectives. Her talk is entitled Negotiating Voice and Authority. Tibetan Women‘s Lives and the Construction of Herstory.
Gurmeet Kaur’s study centres women in the Himalayan Buddhist worlds as shapers, challengers, and carriers of tradition. Drawing on a nine-century biographical corpus (mid-10th to mid-20th centuries) of Tibetan women and read through feminist hermeneutics, it advances a collective “herstory” that calls for methodological reorientation rather than mere additive inclusion. Kaur shows how women’s authority cohered through three intersecting dynamics: relational positioning within kinship and institutional networks; charismatic credentialization through ascetic virtuosity, visionary experience, and ritual mastery; and crisis leadership during political upheaval and institutional rupture. This work highlight how women have continually made and remade Tibetan Buddhism from within.
