Murals of Tibet: No. 81-160 White Vairochana, Jonang Puntsoling (Baby Sumo/Art Ed./2冊合售)

Thomas C. Laird
American photographer and writer Thomas C. Laird has explored the art, culture, and history of the Himalayas since 1972. Based in Nepal for three decades, his reporting and photography have been published globally by TIME, Geo, Newsweek, Le Figaro, National Geographic, and many others. His nonfiction books include a history of Tibet written with the Dalai Lama, translated into 14 languages. From 2008, he has created the world’s first life-size images of enormous Tibetan wall murals. Fine art prints of these works have been the focus of several exhibitions and are held in both public and private collections.

Heather Stoddard
Heather Stoddard is a semi-retired professor of Tibetan literature, history and language at INALCO in Paris. Born in England, she studied Chinese and Tibetan at SOAS and the Sorbonne, becoming one of the first scholars to study modern Tibetan intellectuals. She has authored several essays and books on the history of Tibet, including The Beggar from Amdo, the definitive biography of monk and polymath Gendun Chophel, and Tibet from Buddhism to Communism. She writes extensively on Tibetan literature and art and has traveled annually to the Tibetan plateau for over three decades. She lives today in Oxford, UK.

Jakob Winkler
Jakob Winkler is a Tibetologist (M.A.) who studied in Munich, Kathmandu, and Vienna. He works as a scholar, translator, editor, and teacher in the field of Tibetology and Buddhism. Winkler has studied and practiced Buddhism since the mid-eighties under various masters. His main teacher is the Dzogchen master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, from whom he received authorization to teach Dharma in 2002 as a Santi Maha Sangha instructor. He is one of the Western experts of Dzogchen and has contributed fundamental research to the understanding of Lhasa’s Lukhang temple, being the first Western scholar to identify Pema Lingpa’s treasure text as the source for the Lukhang mural.

Robert A. F. Thurman
Robert A. F. Thurman (1941–2026) was a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism who held a Vajrāchārya degree from the Dalai Lama’s Monastery, where he was briefly a monk, and a Ph.D from Harvard University. He was the Jey Tsongkhapa Professor Emeritus of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, holding for 31 years the first endowed chair in the West in this field. He co-founded the American Institute of Buddhist Studies, to translate the Tibetan classics, and also Tibet House US, to preserve Tibetan culture, endangered in its homeland. He had been close friends and a student of the Dalai Lama since 1964. A prolific author, he was a strong advocate of the Buddhist spiritual sciences and for the survival of Tibet and its enlightening culture. Upon his retirement in 2019, he received the prestigious Padma Shri Award for his life’s work of helping India enhance the record of its classical Buddhist heritage.