Dr. Gyal Lo is an educational sociologist and leading expert on China’s assimilation and education policies in Tibet. Born in Amdo, Tibet (an area of eastern Tibet China now calls Gansu), he received his master’s degree from the Tibetan Language and Culture Department at Northwestern University for Nationalities in Lanzhou, China. In 1995, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the same department where he taught for the next decade. He did extensive research into the area of Tibetan education and, in particular, school curriculum development for Tibetans and later received a master’s degree and PhD in Educational Sociology from the University of Toronto. He then returned to China where he worked as a professor at the Yunnan Normal University Institute for Studies in Education (ISE) from 2017-2020. He was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) Fellowship for his research entitled “Culturally-Relevant Education for Minority and Rural Villages in Asia”.

Dr. Gyal Lo is the author of “Sociology of Tibet” (The Library of Tibetan works and Archives, 2023) and “Social Structuration in Tibetan Society: Education, Society, and Spirituality” (Lexington Books, 2021).

His recent journal articles include: “A sociological analysis of Tibetan language policy issues in China”, SN Social Science (2021) 1:89; “Informing a research model of Tibetan Village Studies”, Journal of Gannan Ethnocultural Studies (Tibetan), Vol 3, pp. 4-26; “A sociological study on the recent social role changes of Tibetan village women”, Journal of Gannan Ethnocultural Studies (Tibetan), Vol 2, pp. 78-90; “Towards mutuality in modernizing Tibetan Higher Education institution in China”, Diaspora, Indigenous and Minority Education, Vol, 13 (4). Pp. 236-247; and “Ethnographical studies and Tibetan village knowledge reproduction”, Journal of Gannan Ethnocultural Studies (Tibetan), Vol 2, 84-115.

For more on Dr Gyal Lo’s work: DrGyalLo.com