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Come hear...

DAVID GERMANO
Co-director, Tibet Center
Associate professor, University of Virginia
Director, SHANTI (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts Network of Technological Initiatives) at UVA

"Tibet, Technology and Transformation in Higher Education"

FRIDAY, February 4th
4:15 pm
Rockefeller 002


Sponsored by Robert A. 1925 and Catherine L. McKennan Fund for Anthropology; Co-sponsored by AMES and the Rubin Foundation
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Abstract:
What would higher education look like if it were radically embrace digital technology in a manner that we see in, for example, the commercial sector? 

Digital technology in the form of computers and the Internet has a relatively short history as a ubiquitous phenomena (mid 1980s and mid 1990s respectively), and yet has already had a transformative impact on many quarters of our society. Higher education, with its typical conservatism, has been relatively slow to explore such transformative possibilities, with broad scale change still quite limited in the Academy. What would higher education look like if it were radically embrace digital technology in a manner that we see in, for example, the commercial sector? This talk will present a vision of a possible academic future in this light, and focus on possible pathways towards changing our basic practices in research, teaching, publication, and engagement through leveraging the power of digital technology.


*David Germano is a leading figure in Tibetan Studies and Buddhist Studies, specializing on the Great Perfection (Dzogchen) tradition. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at UVA, the co-director of UVA's Tibet Center, and the present director of SHANTI, UVA's Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts Network of Technological Initiatives. 

Germano is a true innovator, both in and out of the classroom. Since 2000, Germano has also been the director and driving force behind the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library (www.thlib.org). This international project involves multiple major collaborations involving technology in GIS research, language instructional materials, dictionaries, literary archives, ethnographic research and historical work. This is the largest international initiative in Tibetan Studies involving digital technology, multiple disciplines, and multiple institutions. It is also leading efforts at integrating academic work with community services initiatives (specifically in fields of education, health, and social history) in Tibet and the greater Himalayan region. Germano is the primary person responsible for the Library's structural design, social networks, and intellectual program, as well as being active in one way or another in almost every major project therein.