La SFEMT a le plaisir d’annoncer la tenue, dans le cadre du Cycle de Conférences SFEMT 2025/2026, de la conférence suivante :
Girl Power: Nuns’ Proclamations of Self-Empowerment at Tekcholing Nunnery, Nepal
Par Renée L. Ford (Ruhr Universität Bochum)
le jeudi 22 janvier 2026 à 18h00 via Zoom (shorturl.at/kmvO1)
Résumé de la conférence :
My talk focuses on a case study of the interagency between the nuns at Tekcholing Nunnery, Nepal and the institutional matrix in which the nuns are embedded. My main question revolves around situating how the nuns proclaim a sense of self-empowerment through their dependency on the larger international community and how this community also relies upon their daily involvement. Currently, I grapple with wanting to represent the nuns’ voices clearly while also being a Western white scholar who views the freedoms of women in Nepal with a dismal perspective. My objective is to hear and see the women’s stories clearly beyond my own biases and the social political structures imposed upon the women.
My work, so far, is presented through an ethnographic lens that primarily relies upon first- person accounts of nuns’ expressions of “girl power” and confidence, which are proclamations of self empowerment. Firstly, I wish to further examine the complex layers of dependency created by the international Buddhist community, the gendered dimensions of Nepal social structures, and the relationships between the male and female monastic communities that may play an effect on agency. Secondly, I wish to understand how the nuns shared their life-stories. Lastly, I focus on the nuns’ expressions of confidence and how they navigate these complex roles and expectations. My goal is to present these relationships from the nuns’ perspectives and finally, discuss how their expectations navigate their own futures. Tekcholing Nunnery is a Karma Kagyu institution established in the early 2000’s by a Tibetan monk, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, who arrived in India from escaping Tibet in the 1960’s with several young nuns. The Karma Kagyu institution traces its lineage back to the 10 th century to Tilopa, an Indian Buddhist master and has held significant religious and political influence in Tibet throughout history. Today, the leader of the lineage, the 17th Karmapa, continues to be an international Buddhist leader. Tekcholing Nunnery operates within this international Buddhist community and provides prayers and end of life rituals for international Buddhist practitioners, who donate funds for these practices and to the nunnery itself. In these ways, the nuns are embedded in an international matrix that consists of patriarchal and wealthy donors, all of whom maintain power and direction over the nunnery. However, the nuns still express and experience their own sense of confidence and navigate their futures. This work is based upon fieldwork conducted from 2023 – 2024 with the nuns at Tekcholing Nunnery. Primarily, the nuns shared their experiences through life story interviews, conversations, and focused interviews that shared expressions of confidence and cultivating “girl power” in their daily lives. At the same time, through participant observation and conversations with international members of the community, the constraints of the women’s futures were gathered to more fully understand how these women navigate the interagency of living at Tekcholing Nunnery.
A propos de la conférencière :
Renée L. Ford is a Lore Agnes Fellow at Ruhr Universität Bochum and focuses on meditative practices in the Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist tradition. She engages in multimodal approaches to her research such as film, texts, interpersonal interviews, and digital humanities. Currently, her work focuses on a 14 th century Tibetan master, Longchen Rabjam (1308 – 1364) commentaries on earlier Great Completeness (rdzogs chen) texts. Renée also teaches courses at the University of Denver. Overall, her research focuses on the interplay between Tantra and Dzogchen (rdzogs chen) in the Heart Essence, Vast Expanse (klong chen snying thig) literature in Nyingma (rnying ma) lineages.