Written by Alexander Zorin

On 28 December 2025, Professor Vladimir Uspensky passed away in Saint Petersburg, having turned seventy-one in the hospital. I was aware that he had been facing serious health problems related to cancer; nevertheless, his death came as a great shock. He always wrote about his condition with remarkable calm, and I believed it to be under control. We exchanged messages just a few days before his heart stopped, and I could not imagine that this would be the last time I would hear from him.   

As recently as April of 2025, Anna Turanskaya, Alla Sizova, and I published an article in the Revue d’Études Tibétaines celebrating the jubilees of Vladimir Leonidovich—as we called him in Russian, following the traditional use of patronymics—and his friend, Professor Anna Tsendina. That article contains all the major information on Uspensky’s academic career and bibliography; there is therefore little sense in repeating it here. Instead, I will highlight only some of the main episodes and achievements, adding a few personal notes.

Uspensky studied Mongolian and Tibetan at Leningrad State University from 1975 to 1981. At that time, Bronislav Kuznetsov (1931–1985) was the only professor of Tibetan in the USSR. The photograph below shows Kuznetsov surrounded by his many students and younger colleagues, including Uspensky (fourth from the right, with a moustache and a tie). I received this photograph from Vladimir Uspensky in April 2020, while I was working on a book about the history of Tibetan studies in Russia. Uspensky supported my work greatly, providing several important details related to both well-known and virtually unknown figures.

In the same year that this photograph was taken, Uspensky graduated from the university and entered the doctoral program at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences – IOM RAS). A passionate lover of old Tibetan and Mongolian books, he always wished to work with the admirable collection of Tibetan manuscripts and block prints preserved at this institute. He was a member of a joint project with the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP) aimed at cataloguing this collection. From 1992 to 1996, and again from 2002 to 2005, he coordinated, along with Dr. Lev Savitsky (1932–2007), the work of a group of Tibetans from Sera Mey Monastery (Karnataka, India) at the Institute.

Between these two periods, he was a visiting professor in Japan at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (1996–1997), an experience he always recalled with great warmth, and then he worked intensively on cataloguing the significant collection of Mongolian manuscripts and block prints at Saint Petersburg State University. He was the first to identify and describe the collection of books brought by Vasily Vasilyev (1818–1900) from Beijing to Kazan and then to St Petersburg. Some of these books, as Uspensky ascertained, belonged to the Manchu Prince Yunli (1697–1738), to whom Uspensky dedicated a special monograph (1997).

The discovery of the Vasilyev collection was especially meaningful for Uspensky. As he himself wrote in one of his emails to me (from 29 January 2024; the English translation is mine): “Academician Vasilyev became my idol in my second year at university, when I came across his book, Buddhism. Of course, I understood very little, but I grasped the main point: a scholar of the East must work from sources in Eastern languages”. Uspensky made significant contributions to the history of 19^th– and early 20^th-century Russian Tibetology and Mongolian studies, which were closely connected to Kazan: many outstanding scholars were born there or nearby, or worked in the city. Tatarstan was also important to him because his wife, the Indologist Elena Uspenskaya (1957–2015), belonged to a subethnic group of Kryashens, sometimes referred to as Baptized Tatars. After her sudden death, she was buried in her native town, Yelabuga (Tatar: Alabuğa), and Uspensky often traveled there to visit her grave. In October 2025, he did so for the last time.

In the same email quoted above, he wrote about another trip: “I visited several places associated with Russian Orientalists: Archimandrite Palladius (Kafarov) and Academician Vasiliev. <…> I look rather worn out, but please judge me leniently—two sleepless nights. The point is not about me, but that this is Kainki, the estate that Vasiliev received as his wife’s dowry. Within the enclosure of this church, he was buried next to his wife. I could not discern any traces of their graves. My sorrowful gaze is directed toward the place where our great predecessor is buried”.

I do not know whether Uspensky adhered to any particular religion. He always spoke about all religious traditions with respect, and he certainly felt particularly close to Orthodox Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism, yet he described himself as a positivist whose worldview was grounded in science. Still, he believed in certain subtle connections that tie people together. When he learned that the date of my birth coincided with the date of his expulsion from the IOM’s Tibetan collection in 2005, he seemed to be convinced it was more than mere coincidence. This is not the place or time to recount in detail his brief tenure as a full-fledged curator of the collection. It suffices to say that the abrupt end of that period was among the saddest days of his life. Later, when I myself became the former curator of this collection, he told me that he had always declined my invitations to visit it, because it is too painful for people to return to a place they loved.

After he began working at Saint Petersburg University in 2007, he developed a new interest in supporting promising students. To his deep regret, however, they eventually all chose to leave the field of Tibetology for more practical pursuits. Nevertheless, he endeavored to introduce new students to Tibetan Buddhist culture, taking them to the historic Saint Petersburg Buddhist Temple Gunzechoinei, with whose abbot, Buda Badmayev (Jampa Donyed Lama), he maintained a friendly relationship.

It is very unfortunate that his major Russian-language monograph, Tibetan Buddhism in Beijing (2011), remains untranslated into English. In this book, Uspensky summarized many years of research on the flourishing of Tibetan Buddhism in China’s capital during the Manchu Qing dynasty. He explored a wide range of topics, including the lamas of Beijing and their high-ranking patrons, Buddhist temples, the printing of religious texts, and the creation of religious art objects. I know that he had planned to prepare a second revised edition in Russian. Sadly, that will never happen.

I have many fond and grateful memories of our relationship, beginning in August 2008 when we traveled together, in a large group of scholars, to Lhasa—for both of us, it was the first opportunity to visit Tibet. I am especially grateful to him for the moral support he extended to me when I found myself in emigration in 2022. He even wrote a review of my Habilitation dissertation in 2025—not every colleague in Russia would have had the courage to do so in the current historical context.

Difficult times, like ours, reveal people’s true character. Vladimir Uspensky was a free and decent person, apart from being a great scholar. I will miss him deeply.

by Camille Simon

It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Shannon Ward on 9th September 2025. Her work as a linguistic anthropologist provides precious insights into multilingual socialization, at a time when the issue of language transmission is a pressing concern among Tibetan communities both in Tibet and in the diaspora.

Immediately after completing her PhD entitled “Learning Language, Transforming Knowledge: Language Socialization in Amdo, Tibet” in 2019 (published as Amdo Lullaby: An Ethnography of Childhood and Language Shift on the Tibetan Plateau, University of Toronto Press, 2024), she took up a position of Assistant Professor in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. Her paper “Style and Standardization: A Case Study of Tibetan Family Interaction in Greater New York” (2015) paved the way for the study of language transmission and language shift among the Tibetan diaspora outside South Asia. From 2020 on, she further engaged in deepening our understanding of Tibetan as a heritage language in the West, with research projects on the preservation of Tibetan language in Canada and a study of linguistic interactions during mealtimes among Tibetan-Canadian families.

I have been in intermittent contact with Shannon since the summer of 2017, when we first met in Xining, and I was particularly pleased to hear her talk about her research on language socialization and acquisition in Amdo. Language acquisition is a field dominated by research on a restricted array of dominant languages, mainly spoken in Western societies. Shannon’s careful documentation of language acquisition and socialization among minoritized families in the multilingual context of Amdo thus represents a much-needed contribution to this field. Furthermore, her analysis of the dynamics of language shift in the current political context in Amdo and the role and place of children in this process also provides an invaluable insight into the situation. Over time, I have increasingly learned to admire Shannon’s precise and thorough analyses of linguistic phenomena and everyday interactions, always based on intensive fieldwork and a deep familiarity with the people she worked with. Such scientifically impressive results were only permitted by her in-depth knowledge of Tibetic languages.

With the untimely death of Shannon Ward, we not only lose a brilliant scholar but also an enthusiastic and dedicated colleague. Her genuine interest in converting her research findings into practical tools for the Tibetan communities can be illustrated, for example, by the workshop on Tibetan Heritage Language Education she organized in May 2024 with the Tibetan community in Vancouver. I cannot claim to have known Shannon very well on a personal level, but our exchanges were always full of prospects for new ideas and projects, and I deeply regret that we did not have time to collaborate more.

Details on Shannon Ward’s research projects can be found here. An interview about her book Amdo Lullaby can be found here.

Written by Birgit Kellner, Pascale Hugon and Reinier Langelaar, with support of Anne MacDonald.

We are deeply saddened to announce that our colleague and friend, Michael Hee Ium, passed away at Vienna’s General Hospital on April 9, 2025, after a sudden onset of severe illness. Michael joined the Austrian Academy of Sciences in January 2025. He worked at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA) as a Postdoctoral Fellow within the project “TibSchol: The dawn of Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism (11th–13th c.).” We felt very fortunate to have him as a member of our Institute, even if his stay with us was cut short, and far too brief.

Born and raised in Toronto as the son of South Korean immigrants, Michael completed degrees at the University of Toronto (BSc Psychology), Maitripa College (MA Buddhist Studies), and the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the Department of Religious Studies (MA, PhD 2023, Religious Studies), where he also began to gain teaching experience. After having earned his PhD, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion and the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies. He subsequently taught at the University of Toronto, Mississauga’s Department of Historical Studies.

A textualist and historian of religion, his research focused on the religions of Tibet and South Asia, and in particular, on the early history of Ganden Monastery and the construction of the Geluk tradition in Tibet, which was the subject of his dissertation. Although the Geluk tradition is largely regarded as a monastic and scholastic tradition, Michael’s research emphasized the importance of understudied aspects of the tradition, such as mahāsiddhas, oracular prophecy, and pilgrimage, for its growth and development. His 2022 article “Tsongkhapa as a mahāsiddha: A Reevaluation of the Patronage of the Gelukpa in Tibet” (Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 45, 73-117) provides a glimpse of his intellectual brilliance and his nuanced approach to Tibetan religious history. Michael also served as co-editor for the Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies (CJBS, https://thecjbs.org/).

During his short period at the IKGA and as a member of the TibSchol project, we swiftly came to appreciate Michael not only for his insightful scholarship, deep intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm, but also for his warm and gentle nature, his humility and compassion. In only a few months time, Michael became a close colleague and friend to many at our Institute, as well as to colleagues and students at the University of Vienna. He was excited to embark on a new phase in his life, and the community in Vienna warmly embraced him. We all were looking forward to working with him, learning from him, and enjoying his amicable and uplifting company. His untimely passing was a shock that reverberated far beyond Vienna, however, and our thoughts are with everyone who had the pleasure of knowing him. Michael spent his final days with his beloved mother. Close colleagues and friends were by his side.

His academic accomplishments can be found in Michael’s CV.

by Gyalrong Tenzin Jinpa

Professor Tsanlha Ngawang Tsültrim Yéshé Drönmé (1930–2025) passed away on February 16, 2025, at the age of 95 in a hospital in Chengdu. His passing marks the loss of a scholar whose enduring legacy will continue to shape our understanding of Tibetan culture, history, and language. Born in 1930 in Tsanlha, Gyalrong, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, his life was deeply intertwined with the political upheavals, personal struggles, and cultural resilience that defined Tibet in the twentieth century.

Recognized as a tulku from an early age, Professor Ngawang moved to Lhasa to pursue his education in the 1940s, where he quickly established himself as a brilliant debater and one of the top students at Drepung Loserling College. However, disillusioned by the political dynamics within the monastic community and the Lhasa aristocracy, he returned to Gyalrong in 1948, determined to chart a path of his own. In the 1950s, captivated by the promises of justice and equality offered by the Chinese Communist Party, he became involved in their United Front efforts. Yet, the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and the political upheavals that followed led him to reassess his path, turning his focus instead to the preservation of Tibetan culture and heritage, a mission he would carry for the rest of his life.

Under the mentorship of Tibet’s foremost scholars, Mugé Samten and Dungkar Lozang Trinlé, and with the encouragement and inspiration of his classmate Döndrup Gyel — an exceptionally innovative modern Tibetan writer and intellectual of his era — Professor Ngawang emerged as a leading figure in Tibetan studies. Among his many contributions, The Dictionary of Classical Tibetan (1997, 2023) remains a cornerstone of Tibetan language scholarship, an indispensable resource for scholars and students alike. Yet his work transcended lexicography. Driven by an unwavering commitment to preserving the cultural legacy of Gyalrong, he devoted himself to documenting its history, unearthing lost archives, and revitalizing the cultural memory of his homeland. His monumental achievement, the Gyalrong Tibetan History and Culture Series (2017), a 10-volume collection published by Sichuan Minzu Press, ensured that Gyalrong’s rich history would never be lost to time.

In his memoir, The Beggar Lama: The Life of the Gyalrong Kuzhap (2023), Professor Ngawang offered a deeply personal account of his life, navigating the complex intersections of religion, politics, and scholarship. His reflections also found their way into other works, including Small Peoples, Big Histories: Speaking from China’s Margins, a new book project by Tenzin Jinba. This work delves into the deep-rooted issues within Tibetan society—regional and religious divides, and the evolving role of Tibetan Buddhism in the modern world. For instance, Professor Ngawang endured ridicule from the Gelug establishment, who labeled him a “Bönpo lama” for his engagement with Bön history and materials. He saw these internal divisions within Tibetan society as shadows—tumors—that needed urgent self-reflection. He believed that only through such self-critique could Tibetan identity and culture thrive.

Despite the many challenges and disappointments he faced, Professor Ngawang remained steadfast in his belief in the future of Tibetan culture and religions. At times, he expressed a longing for a place where Tibetan spiritual traditions remained intact, even suggesting that he would rather be reborn in Bhutan. Yet he never wavered in his conviction that Tibetan traditions had a vital role to play in the future of humanity, offering profound wisdom and guidance to a world in desperate need. A man of profound contrasts—critical yet hopeful, disillusioned yet unwaveringly dedicated to preserving Tibetan heritage—his legacy will resonate for generations to come.

Professor Ngawang’s life was a testament to resilience, intellectual rigor, and an unyielding commitment to the survival of Tibetan culture. As a tulku, scholar, revolutionary, and above all, a guardian of Tibetan heritage, he faced enormous challenges yet remained undeterred in his efforts to preserve the Tibetan language, history, and traditions. His tireless work, scholarly contributions, and enduring spirit have left an indelible mark. His memory will continue to inspire future generations, and his legacy will live on in the hearts of all those who share in the struggle to protect cultural identities in an ever-changing world.

Selected works

Btsan lha Ngag dbang Tshul khrims. 1997. Brda dkrol gser gyi me long/Guzangwen cidian 古藏文辭典 [The Dictionary of Classical Tibetan]. Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe; updated edition, 2023.

———. 2009. A Lexicon of the Rgyalrong Btsanlha Dialect: Rgyalrong-Chinese-Tibetan-English. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.

———, ed. 2020. Rgyal rong yul skad zhib ‘jug/Zangyu Jiarong Fangyan 藏語嘉絨方言研究 [Research on the Tibetan Gyalrong Dialect]. Chengdu: Sichuan Minzu Chubanshe.

Seng ge ‘bum, Btsan lha Ngag dbang Tshul khrims, Tsheng dbang, Bstan ’dzin sbyin pa, and Nam mkha’ tshul khrims, eds. 2017. Shar rgyal mo tsha ba rong gi lo rgyus dang rig gnas dpe tshogs/Jiarong Zangzu Lishi Wenhua Congshu 嘉絨藏族歷史文化叢書 [Gyalrong Tibetan History and Culture Series]. Chengdu: Sichuan Minzu Chubanshe.

Dear colleagues,

It is with great sadness that I must inform you that Jeffrey Hopkins passed away in Vancouver (BC) overnight following complications with cancer.

Born Paul Jeffrey Hopkins in Barrington, Rhode Island in 1940, Hopkins attended Pomfret Preparatory School, following which he matriculated at Harvard University. It was there that he met his fellow student Robert Thurman, who in turn, encouraged him to pursue their mutual studies with Geshe Wangyal in Freewood Acres, New Jersey.

After four years of study with Geshe Wangyal and his community of scholars and practitioners, Hopkins matriculated at the University of Wisconsin at Madison to pursue an advanced degree in Buddhist Studies under Richard Robinson. Working closely with the former abbot of the Gomang College of Drepung Monastic University, Kensur Ngawang Lekden, as well as other learned scholars from the Tibetan tradition, Hopkins completed his PhD in 1973, “Meditation on Emptiness,” an extensive response to T.R.V. Murti’s contention that meditation in Prāsaṅgika-Mādhyamika lacked an object, a work that was eventually published by Wisdom Publications in 1983.

Hopkins’s first academic appointment was in the Religious Studies department at the University of Virginia, where he proceeded to build what would become the premier program of studies in Tibetan Buddhism in the Western hemisphere, serving as advisor to eighteen completed Ph.D. and thirty-one masters students, and where he remained throughout the rest of his academic career until his retirement in 2005.

In his personal reflections and autobiographical writings, Hopkins stated that he remembered elements of his previous life as a monk in Tibet, including the manner of his death. In addition, as a child, he maintained that he had a private language in which he thought, and from which he needed to translate into English when speaking with others. Having abandoned his internal language around the age of ten for the ease of communicating in English, it was not until he began his studies with Geshe Wangyal in the 1960s that he realized that the private internal language of his childhood was Tibetan.

Feeling a close personal connection to Tibet, throughout his career, Hopkins performed many additional roles in the larger sphere of Tibetan Buddhism, such as serving as the Dalai Lama’s official interpreter from 1976 to 1996, testifying before the U.S. congress as an expert witness on the Tibetan political situation, as well as organizing conferences and the visitations of leading Tibetan scholars to the University of Virginia for his students to study with.

He was 83 years old.

Paul Hackett