AFFILIATED RESEARCHER 2025-2026 ROLF SCHEUERMANN

His dissertation focused on the famous doctrine of the Four Dharmas of sGam po pa (Dwags po chos bzhi), a short work that belongs to the genre of the Stages of the Path (lam rim), which has been relatively neglected so far in Western studies. Its author is the famous monk yogi sGam po pa bSod nams rin chen (1079-1153) who played a crucial role during the second spread of Buddhism in Tibet.

Apart from this work on the early bKa' brgyud tradition, his further research focuses on Tibetan eschatology, Tibetan strategies for coping with the future, the Jo nang tradition's gZhan stong-Madhyamaka philosophy and its specific interpretation of buddha nature, the translation of Buddhist works, but also cultural exchange processes.

From October 2014 to April 2021, he worked as a research coordinator at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication. Strategies for Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe.” From April 2017 to September 2018, he was on partial leave in order to substitute the Junior Professor of Central Asian Studies at the University of Leipzig.

From March 2021 to February 2025, he was research area coordinator responsible for event management at CAPAS. At the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, he also serves as an adjunct Tibetan Language Lecturer since the winter term 2021/22 and regulary interprets for different Tibetan Buddhist masters of all traditions. 

During the summer term 2024, he was on leave in order to serve as Interim Professor to represent the vacant chair of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (Vertretungsprofessur) at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

March 2025, he joined the CATS Kolleg “Epochal Lifeworlds - Narratives of Crisis and Change” at Heidelberg University as a research fellow.