Dagmar Schwerk
Dagmar Schwerk is a Marie Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Religions at Leipzig University working on her current research project “ Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Travel: Identity- and Nation-Building in Bhutan.” From 2018 to 2022, Dagmar Schwerk was a Khyentse Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and she is the recipient of the Khyentse Foundation Award for Excellence in Buddhist Studies 2012. She studied Tibetology, Classical Indology, and Political Science at the University of Hamburg from 2006 to 2012. Focusing on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, she obtained her MA in 2012 with a thesis titled “Spiegel der Sichtweise: Die Kernpunkte [der Philosophie] des Mittleren [Weges] (dBu ma’i bsdus don lta ba’i me long): Eine kurze Abhandlung über das Madhyamaka rJe dGe-’dun-rin-chens (1926–1997), dem 69. rJe mKhan-po von Bhutan.” In 2017, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Dorji Wangchuk, Dagmar Schwerk completed her Ph.D. about the controversy of the Mahāmudrā doctrine and meditative system from the perspective of the Bhutanese ‘Brug-pa bKa’-brgyud school between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. The works discussed show how oral discourses formed into elite textual traditions that gained trans-regional relevance in eighteenth-century Tibet and Bhutan. Dagmar Schwerk's monograph focuses in particular on a critical edition, translation, and interpretation of the sixty-ninth rJe-mkhan-po dGe-bshes Brag-phug-pa dGe-‘dun-rin-chen (1926–97)'s main Mahāmudrā work comprising root verses of the ninth rJe-mkhan-po Shākya-rin-chen (1710–59). In addition, Dagmar Schwerk explores the sixty-ninth rJe-mkhan-po dGe-bshes Brag-phug-pa dGe-‘dun-rin-chen’s life and vast literary heritage based on biographical and autobiographical accounts.
Her main research interests are Indo-Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan and Bhutanese intellectual, political, and social history—particularly between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
Publications:
Schwerk, Dagmar. 2023a (forthcoming). “Zhapdrung Ngawang Namgyel’s Sixteen I’s.” In Global Secularity: A Sourcebook: Vol. 3. East Asia, Inner and Central Asia, and South and South East Asia, edited by Christoph Kleine, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, and Florian Zemmin. Leipzig: Leipzig University, CAHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities.”
Schwerk, Dagmar. 2023b (forthcoming). “The Standardized Bhutanese Legal Code from 1729.” In Global Secularity: A Sourcebook: Vol. 3. East Asia, Inner and Central Asia, and South and South East Asia, edited by Christoph Kleine, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, and Florian Zemmin. Leipzig: Leipzig University, CAHSS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities.”
Schwerk, Dagmar. 2022b. Secularizing Buddhism: New Perspectives on a Dynamic Tradition, edited by Richard K. Payne. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 2021. Book review. Journal of Global Buddhism 23 (1): 87–94. https://doi.org/10.26034/lu.jgb.2022.2331.
Schwerk, Dagmar. 2021. “Drukpa Kagyü School (Bhutan).” In Database of Religious History. Vancouver: University of British Columbia. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0398123.
Schwerk, Dagmar. A Timely Message from the Cave: The Mahāmudrā and Intellectual Agenda of dGe-bshes Brag-phug-pa dGe-’dun-rin-chen (1926–1997), the Sixty-Ninth rJe-mkhan-po of Bhutan. Indian and Tibetan Studies 11. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2020.
Schwerk, Dagmar. “Drawing Lines in a Maṇḍala: A Sketch of Boundaries Between Religion and Politics in Bhutan.” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 12. Leipzig: Leipzig University, HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities,” 2019. (Link)
Schwerk, Dagmar. “Buddhism and Politics in the Tibetan Cultural Area.” In Companion to the Study of Secularity. Edited by HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities.” Leipzig: Leipzig University, HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities,” 2019. (Link)
Schwerk, Dagmar. “The Pointed Spear of a Siddha and its Commentaries: The ’Brug pa bka’ brgyud School in Defence of the Mahāmudrā Doctrine.” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 37, December (2016): 352–373 (peer-reviewed). (Link)