Dr. Torsten Gerloff

Dr. Torsten Gerloff began his academic career at the University of Hamburg in 2008 where he studied Sanskrit (major), Tibetan and Thai (minor). In 2012, he received his BA and continued focussing on mantranaya Buddhism (specifically the Hevajra Cycle) and Sanskrit philology in the following years. In 2014, he successfully submitted his MA thesis "An Attempt towards the Reconstruction and Critical Edition of the Hevajraprakāśa". After one year of employment as a Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (50%) at the Centre for Tantric Studies (CTS), Torsten Gerloff was granted a two-year scholarship of the Faculty of Humanities in order to conduct his doctoral research project "Saroruhavajra’s Hevajra-Lineage: A Close Study of the Surviving Sanskrit Works". In 2017, the University of Hamburg awarded him the degree of a Doctor of Philosophy. Immediately following this, Torsten Gerloff began to work as an university lecturer and research scholar at Mahidol University, Thailand, where he had spent several terms during his previous studies. Thanks to a research funding of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), he was able to extend and revise his doctoral research during this stay at Mahidol University. The results of it are published in the Indian and Tibetan Studies Series of the University of Hamburg (ITS 7.1 & 7.2: Saroruhavajra’s Hevajra-Lineage: A Close Study of the Surviving Sanskrit and Tibetan Works). Since October 2020, and thanks to another grant of the DFG, Torsten Gerloff has returned to the University of Hamburg to conduct his new research project "Indrabhūti’s Jñānasiddhi" together with Julian Schott at the Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies.

Although his primary focus lays on the study of the Buddhist Tantric Traditions with a special emphasis on the Hevajra and Guhyasamāja systems, Torsten Gerloff has a general interest in the study of Mahāyāna Buddhism including the pāramitānaya and Abhidharma literature in the cultural extents of India, Tibet and Southeast Asia. According to him, the close study of the surviving textual witnesses is of major importance for the more complete and thorough understanding of the Buddhist traditions in the light of their own doctrinal positions and soteriological practices.

CV - Dr. Torsten Gerloff