Laura Harrington received her received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Columbia University and subsequently taught Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Asian Religions, Buddhist Art and Comparative Asian Medical Traditions at Trinity College and Wesleyan University. Her interests also include Tibetan Buddhism in the United States.
Professor Harrington’s research focuses on the study of Buddhist material culture, with a particular emphasis on the role of embodiment and emotion in the production of religious belief. Her interests also include the impact of so-called “modernity” discourse on the study of Tibet. She is contributing editor (with Robert Barnett) of the volume New Perspectives on Tibetan Traditionality, and contributing editor for the books Tibetan Astro-Science (Tibet Domani, 2000) and Kalachakra (Tibet Domani, 1999). Her present book in progress is titled Secular Incarnations: Buddhist Tantra in Euro-American Thought.
Her recent publications include a translation of a Tantric commentary by the second Dalai Lama of Tibet, and an exploration of a Tibetan Buddhist ritual through the lens of cognitive aesthetics.
Click here to visit her faculty profile at the website of the BU Department of Religion.