The CCBS welcomes a new member of the research team: Dendup Chophel

Dendup Chophel is an anthropologist (PhD from the Australian National University) who has joined the Centre for Contemporary Buddhist Studies as a Postdoctoral Fellow on 1 January 2024.

At the CCBS, Dendup will study current and emerging conception of productivity, consumption and waste in Buddhist millennialist movements in Bhutan within the project, “Waste: Consumption and Buddhism in the age of garbage.” His project critically explores how Buddhism, especially 'Millennial Buddhism' under certain circumstances act as an unwitting agent of capitalist practices, and introduces waste and other excesses in indigenous communities, such as Bongo in Southwest Bhutan. The project unpacks how these practices lead to reinterpretation and reconfiguration of traditional pollution beliefs and consumption practices.

His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of religion, ritualism, material prosperity, economic development, and social movements and changes with a regional focus on South Asia, particularly focusing on the Himalayas and Bhutan.

We are very happy to welcome him!

Dendup Chophel has received a PhD in anthropology from the Australian National University. He was a 2023 Early Career Research Fellow of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies, which is administered by the American Council of Learned Societies. He studied the resurgence of Buddhist influence in Bhutanese polity in the aftermath of the unprecedented socio-economic disruptions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. His study observed that Bhutan, the world's last Vajrayana kingdom, re-activated its indigenous governance model of chos srid zung 'brel - or the dual system of Buddhist and secular laws – in the post-pandemic reconstruction of the country. The clerical support materialised through its traditional ritual interventions and the revitalisation of its community outreach activities. At the Center for Advanced Studies-Erlangen (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), he studied elderly female mediums (nejoms) in Ketokha and Bongo villages of Bhutan, and their often asymmetrical relation with institutionalised Buddhism. In doing so, he unpacked the processes and impact of Buddhist gentrification in displacing localised ritual practices in historically marginal communities in Bhutan. On a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Institute of Developing Economies-Japanese External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO) in Japan, he has explored the fundamental ways in which Buddhism counterintuitively valorises and promotes economic productivity and material prosperity in a Bhutanese overseas community in Australia. Dendup is also an Associated Researcher at the Institute of Social Anthropology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has previously worked as a policy researcher at the Centre for Bhutan & GNH Studies in Thimphu, which is an interdisciplinary government think-tank.

 

 

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