Dr. Carola Roloff
Carola Roloff, a fully-ordained Buddhist nun, studied Tibetan Buddhism with traditional Tibetan teachers, principally with dGe-bshes Thub-bstan-ngag-dbang (1932–2003), and Tibetology at the University of Hamburg (MA 2003). She received her PhD from the same University in 2009 (doctoral thesis: “Red mda’ ba: Buddhist Yogi Scholar of the Fourteenth Century. The Forgotten Reviver of Madhyamaka Philosophy in Tibet”). As an engaged Buddhist, she has been very active in teaching, traveling, holding lectures, and in extracurricular activities. Currently, she is working on her DFG-funded project “The Ordination of Nuns in the Tibetan Buddhist Canon and Its Presentation in the Tibetan Commentaries.” Some of her main research interests include ordination and ordination lineages of Buddhist nuns, monastic rituals and rules in the Mūlasarvāstivāda tradition, along with its treatment in the Tibetan commentarial literature, biographies of Tibetan teachers such as Red-mda’-ba (1348–1412) and Tsong-kha-pa (1357–1419), and several contemporary issues such as women’s rights in Buddhism.
e-mail: carola.roloff@uni-hamburg.de