Tenzin Mingyur Paldron (he/they/ཁོ་/ཁོང་)
I’m a transgender Tibetan artist and educator based in New York City.
I hold a PhD in Rhetoric and a specialization in Gender & Sexuality Studies. I completed these trainings at UC Berkeley’s Rhetoric Department and Gender & Women’s Studies Department, respectively. An excerpt from my dissertation, Tibet, China, and the United States: Self-immolation and the limits of understanding (2021), can be read here.
Some recognitions I’ve received for my doctoral work include the UC Dissertation-Year Fellowship, the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship, the Magistretti Fellowship in Asian Languages, Cultures, History, and Society, and the Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship.
I was born in New Delhi under refugee status and became one of the first Tibetan children to live in the United States. I grew up in the 1990s in a mobile home park in Colorado as well as apartments in Washington State. I’m a first-generation college graduate and attended Seattle Central Community College before obtaining my BA in Film at The Evergreen State College.
I like teaching in a way that creates room for personal insight while helping people feel part of a nurturing community. As someone with a variable speech disability, I value working with groups that seek to advance their communication practices. I navigate my disability through a technique I call cooperative conversation.
