Dr Rachael Griffiths

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded project 'PaganTibet' at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE). I completed my BA in the Study of Religions and History at SOAS and earned my MPhil and DPhil in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies/Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. My doctoral research focused on the auto/biographical writings of the Tibetan Buddhist master Sumpa Khenpo Yeshe Paljor (1704-1788), exploring his life and work amidst significant political changes and their effects on the intricate social, intellectual, and political networks of the time.

After my doctoral studies, I held a postdoctoral position in the ‘TibSchol’ project at the OeAW. There, I worked on developing digital resources, including Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) models for Tibetan cursive scripts and a prosopographical database. In my current role at EPHE, I focus on digital humanities and NLP, including HTR and automatic speech recognition (ASR).

I am also a co-founder of the Oral History of Tibetan Studies (OHTS) project at the University of Oxford, which collects and preserves interviews with key figures in the field. Additionally, I serve as a board member and editor-in-chief for Central and South Asia at The Digital Orientalist, an online publication focused on the integration of Digital Humanities in research on Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.