Visiting Scholar
Charles University, Prague

Daniel Berounský is Associate Professor at the Institute of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. He specialises in Tibetan Studies and served as director of the Institute of South and Central Asia (now: Institute of Asian Studies) in the years 2014–2019. He has published extensively on diverse topics, such as Tibetan Literature concerning the afterlife, beginnings of the institution of reincarnated masters in Tibet, case studies of spirit-mediums from contemporary north-eastern Tibet, history of Ngawa (i.e., the epicentre of the recent wave of self-immolations in eastern Tibet), and indigenous rituals in Tibet. In his recent research he explores the little-known lay non-Buddhist ritual tradition in eastern Tibet called leu. He is frequently invited to international lectures (honorary lecture at the annual conference of the Japanese Association for Tibetan Studies, Directeur d‘études invite – EPHE, Paris). He is member of various learned societies and academic bodies, such as the International Association for Tibetan Studies and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. While at the Department in the 2022 summer semester, Professor Berounský co-ordinates a course on "The non-Buddhist Religions of Tibet."