I’ve studied and published in Tibetan Studies, Buddhist Studies, online course design, student engagement through experiential learning, outdoor education, and student flourishing, some of which is discussed in print publications, podcast interviews, my YouTube channel, the Buddhist Studies Footnotes podcast, or in Univerity of Toronto News in 2021 and in 2022. Although single-authored work is most common in my field, I try to co-author research publications with students or members of the community as often as possible. My priority when possible is also to release these publications open access.
My work has been generously supported by the University of Toronto, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies, eCampusOntario, and many other organizations.
Selected Grants & Awards
2023 – Grant from Khyentse Foundation (with Sarah Richardson) for Engaging Education in Buddhist Studies initiative
2021 – eCampus Ontario Virtual Learning Strategies grant for “Teaching for Student Flourishing” project
2019 – Grant from Khyentse Foundation (with Sarah Richardson) for Engaging Education in Buddhist Studies initiative
2018 – Dean’s International and Indigenous Initiatives Fund to support “Himalayan Borderlands” trip to Sikkim, India
2018 – University of Toronto Excellence Award
2017 – SSHRC SIG grant
2017 – SSHRC Insight Grant (2017-2022) for “Himalayan Borderlands“
2017 – ATLAS grant from FAS for “Pilot modules for immersive experiential learning”
2016 – LEAF grant from Office of the Provost, for “University of Toronto Outdoors (UTO): Engaging Place-Based and Expeditionary Learning”
2016 – Dean’s International Initiatives Fund to support “Himalayan Borderlands” student course in Sikkim, India
2016 – MTCU-funded provincial Shared Online Course fund, to support the creation of an Online Classical Tibetan course
2016 – SSHRC SIG grant
2016 – University of Toronto Excellence Award
2015 – SSHRC SIG grant
2015 – University of Toronto Excellence Award
2015 – Online Undergraduate Course Initiatives Award, two awards to support the creation of an Online Classical Tibetan course
2015 – Dean’s International Initiatives Fund and TLKY Teaching Fund, two awards to support “Mapping Buddhist Landscapes in Sikkim,” a student research trip to Sikkim, India
2013 – SSHRC small scale research award
2012 – SSHRC small scale research award
2012 – Northrup Frye Award, University of Toronto
2011 – University of Toronto Excellence Award
2011 – Jackman Humanities Institute Faculty Fellow (served 2012-13)
2011 – Research and Translation Contract from 84,000 (with Ben Wood and Kunga Sherab, 2011-13)
2011 – SSHRC Aid to Research Workshops Grant (2011-12)
2011 – SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2011-2014) for “Mapping an Epic: Religion and Healing in Inner Asia“
2011 – Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario research contract for the project “Networked Academic Profiles for Student-Faculty Collaboration”
2011 – U of T Instructional Technology Initiative Fund award for the project “Networked Academic Profiles for Student-Faculty Collaboration”
2010 – Jackman Humanities Institute Program for the Arts Grant (2010)
2010 – SSHRC Research Development Initiative Grant (2010-2012) for “Gold, Statue, Text: Mapping Movement in Tibetan History“
2009 – SSHRC SIG grant
2009 – SSHRC Image, Text, Sound and Technology Grant (2009-2010) for “Interpreting Visual Representations of Tibetan Ritual“
2008 – SSHRC Standard Research Grant (2008-2011)
2008 – Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group Grant
2008 – SSHRC small scale research award
2007 – SSHRC small scale research award
2006 – David Larson Fellowship at the Kluge Center, U.S. Library of Congress (served in 2007-08)
2006 – Individual Research Grant, American Academy of Religion
2006 – SSHRC SIG grant
2005 – Connaught Fund
2006 – SSHRC SIG grant
2005 – Connaught Fund New Staff Matching Grant
2005 – Connaught Start-up Grant
Work on Pedagogy
2023. Salguero, Pierce, host. “Embodiment and Pedagogy (with Frances Garrett).” Blue Beryl: Buddhism, Asian Medicine, Embodied Spirituality, episode 8. [Open Access]
2022. Windvane: Paths to Wellbeing. Created by Frances Garrett, University of Toronto, https://windvane.life. [Open Access] Read more about this project in the University of Toronto News.
2021. “Deep Listening” in Buddhist Studies: Teaching and Learning during a Pandemic. Co-authored with Sophie Chase. Religions 12, 387. [Open Access]
2021. Designing Classrooms for Inclusivity and Care. YouTube Video, Uploaded by Frances Garrett. [Open Access]
2021. Using Research about Teaching. YouTube Video, Uploaded by Ho Centre for Buddhist Studies. [Open Access]
2019. Richardson, Sarah, host. “Teaching Empathy and Collaboration with Frances Garrett.” The Circled Square: Teaching Buddhist Studies in Higher Education, episode 8.
2019. At the Edge of the Internet: Teaching Coding and Sustainability to Himalayan Girls. Co-authored with Laila Strazds, Matt Price, Dawn Walker. In Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 45(3). [Open Access]
2019. Learning Outdoors and the Humanities Classroom. Co-authored with Laila Strazds, Alysse Kennedy, Salina Suri, Matt Price, Laura Burnett. In Pathways: The Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education 32(1). [Open Access]
2018. Engaged Pedagogy through Role-play in a Buddhist Studies Classroom. Teaching Theology and Religion 21:4. [Download PDF]
2018. Teaching Walking at University. In PADometer Magazine 1. [Open Access]
2015. If You Build It, Will They Come? An Evaluation of Whiteboard, a Networked Academic Profiles Project. co-authored with Matt Price, Stian Haklev. Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario Research Publications. [Open Access]
Books in Tibetan Studies
2020. Hidden Lands in Himalayan Myth and History: Transformations of Sbas yul through Time. Edited by Frances Garrett, Elizabeth McDougal, and Geoffrey Samuel. Brill.
2014. Gling sgrung las byung ba’i bod pa’i gso rig skor gleng pa (Tibetan Medicine in the Gesar Epic), published by Qinghai Nationalities University Gesar Research Institute Press (China) in 2014. Chopa Dondrup is primary author; I am collaborator. 226 pages plus 2 DVDs.
2010. Studies of Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society: Proceedings from the XIth International Association of Tibetan Studies Meetings. S. Craig, M. Cuomo, F. Garrett, and M. Schrempf, eds. (Bonn: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, Contributions to Research on Central Asia series). 591 pages.
2008. Religion, Medicine and the Human Embryo in Tibet. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge. Critical Studies in Buddhism series. 224 pages. See book reviews in Traditional South Asian Medicine and Religions of South Asia.
Articles in Tibetan Studies
2022. Gesar’s Therapeutic Geographies. In The Many Faces of King Gesar: Tibetan and Central Asian Studies in Homage to Rolf A. Stein, edited by Matthew Kapstein and Charles Ramble. Brill.
2020. Healing Mountains in Tibetan Buddhist Literature. In Hidden Lands in Himalayan Myth and History: Transformations of Sbas yul through Time. Edited by Frances Garrett, Elizabeth McDougal, and Geoffrey Samuel. Brill.
2019. The Food of Meditation: Dietary Healing and Power in Tibetan Buddhism. Asian Medicine 14: 56-80. [Open Access]
2016. Hidden Paradises of the Himalaya: Kangchenjunga & Beyul. In Alpinist 54.
2014. The Making of Medical History. In Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, ed. Resi Hofer. University of Washington Press with Rubin Museum of Art. See book reviews in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, or in Asian Medicine. [Open Access]
2013. Mercury, Mad Dogs and Smallpox: Medicine in the Situ Panchen Tradition. In Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 7: 277-301. [Open Access]
2013. Narratives of Hospitality and Feeding in Tibetan Ritual. With Matt King, Barbara Hazelton, Andrew Erlich and Nicholas Field. In Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81 (2): 1-25.
2012. “What children need”: Making Childhood with Technologies of Protection and Healing. In Buddhist Children in Texts and Culture, ed. Vanessa Sasson. Oxford University Press.
2010. Shaping the Illness of Hunger: A Culinary Aesthetics of Food and Healing in Tibet. In Asian Medicine 6 (1): 33-54.
2010. Tapping the Body’s Nectar: Gastronomy and Incorporation in Tibetan Literature. In History of Religions 49 (3): 300-326. [Download PDF]
2009. Eating Letters in the Tibetan Treasure Tradition. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 32 (1-2): 85-114. [Download PDF]
2009. The Alchemy of Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub): Situating the Yuthok Heart Essence Ritual Tradition. Journal of Indian Philosophy 37 (3): 207-230. [Download PDF]
2008. Tibetan Buddhist Narratives of the Forces of Creation. In Imagining The Fetus: The Unborn in Myth, Religion and Culture, eds. Jane Marie Law & Vanessa R. Sasson. Oxford University Press. Pgs. 107-120. [Download PDF]
2008. With Vincanne Adams. The Three Channels in Tibetan Medical and Religious Texts, including a translation of Tsultrim Gyaltsen’s ‘Treatise on the Three Channels in Tibetan Medicine.’ Traditional South Asian Medicine 8: 86-115. [Download PDF]
2007. Critical Methods in Tibetan Medical Histories. Journal of Asian Studies 66 (2): 368-387. [Download PDF]
2007. Embodiment and Embryology in Tibetan Literature: Narrative Epistemology and the Rhetoric of Identity. In Soundings in Tibetan Medicine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Mona Schrempf, 411-426. Leiden: Brill Publishers. [Download PDF]
2007. Buddhism and the Historicizing of Medicine in Thirteenth Century Tibet. Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2 (2): 204-224. [Download PDF]
2005. Ordering Human Growth in Tibetan Medical and Religious Embryologies. In Textual Healing: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Medicine, ed. Elizabeth Furdel, 31-52. Leiden: Brill Publishers. [Download PDF]
2005. Hybrid Methodologies in the Lhasa Mentsikhang. The Tibet Journal 30 (1): 55-64.
Language Instructional Resources
2017-2021. Conversations about Reading Tibetan. YouTube playlist in Classical Tibetan Language Lab YouTube channel, produced and uploaded by Frances Garrett. [Open Access]
2017. Life of Milarepa on NettleTibetan.ca. YouTube playlist in Classical Tibetan Language Lab YouTube channel, produced and uploaded by Frances Garrett. [Open Access]
2017. Nettle Tibetan. Two semester-long Classical Tibetan courses online with original textbook materials and newly developed software interface. Co-authored by Frances Garrett, Kunga Sherab, Edward Garrett, and Annie Heckman. [Open Access]
2010. Amdo Dialect. Resources for the study of Amdo Tibetan language. [Open Access]
2004. Fluent Tibetan Workbook. Tibetan language workbook and system of interactive classroom games to supplement Fluent Tibetan textbook, used in Tibetan language courses at University of Virginia from 1994-2003 and at University of California, Santa Barbara, from 2002.
Podcasting, Films, and Digital Humanities Projects
2022. Buddhist Studies Footnotes. Podcast series, with contributions by Tony Scott.
2014. “Gold, Statue, Text: Mapping Movement in Tibetan History.” Major digital project with a collection of essays, art historical resources, textual databases, mapping, and architectural modeling. First published in Fall 2014; later removed from online access. Collaboratively developed by Frances Garrett, Ben Wood, Sarah Richardson, Kunga Sherab and a technical team of web developers.
2011. Creative and executive producer of film, “Smoke and Sky, Faith and Fortune,” on food and ritual in Tibet. 30 minutes. Directed by Wendekar. [Open Access]
2011. Creative and executive producer of film, “Making Prosperity,” on offering rituals in Tibet. 40 minutes. Directed by Wendekar. [Open Access]
2011. Creative and executive producer of “Seeds in the Wind.” Directed by Wendekar. Screened at the University of Toronto Film Festival, March 2011, and at New Voices, New Visions: Ethnographic Film from Tibet and Myanmar, Toronto, February 2011. [Open Access]