International Seminar of Young Tibetologists was founded to create a venue for collaboration and exchange for postgraduate students and early career researchers who study all aspects of focusing on Tibetan Studies including; culture, history, linguistics, region, and religion. This was achieved through convening the first ISYT conference at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in August 2007, and by founding the ISYT as a sustainable research association that convenes conferences every two to three years.
History
In 1977, Martin Brauen and Per Kværne convened the Seminar of Young Tibetologists in Zürich. They invited sixty scholars, thirty of whom attended the five-day conference. Based on their success, another conference was planned, to take place in Oxford. That conference, convened by Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, marked the formal beginning of the International Association for Tibetan Studies. Later, the Seminar of Young Tibetologists was retroactively awarded the status of being the first IATS seminar. The IATS seminars doubled at nearly every meeting, and, alongside the Sándor Kőrösi Csoma Symposium, became the premier conference in the field of Tibetan studies. With success came exponential growth, and by the time of the fourth seminar in Narita, it was impractical for participants to attend every paper. At the 11th meeting of the International Association for Tibetan Studies in Germany in 2006, the idea was mooted of a separate, but related organisation with a specific focus on Tibetologists in the early stages of their careers.
Seminars
The first International Seminar of Young Tibetologists was convened in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies, in August 2007 by Tim Myatt and Brandon Dotson. Statues were accepted, and a governing board elected to office. The papers presented at this London conference were published in a peer-reviewedacademic journal by , entitled "Contemporary Visions in Tibetan Studies." The second International Seminar of Young Tibetologists was convened in Paris in September 2009, by Elijah Ary, Marc-Henri Deroche, Alice Travers and Nicolas Schneider and saw the participation of approximately 50 participants from 15 different countries. The proceedings of this conference were published by Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines. The third International Seminar of Young Tibetologists was convened in the Kobe City University of Foreign Studies in Kobe, Japan from September 3rd to 7th, 2012 by Kazushi Iwao, Seiji Kumagai, Ai Nishida and Meishi Yamamoto. 60 papers were presented over twenty-two panel sessions and 13 poster presentations. The proceedings of the conference were published as volume 51 of the Journal of Research Institute. The fourth International Seminar of Young Tibetologists was convened from September 7th to 12th, 2015 at the University of Leipzig, Germany by Franz Xaver Erhard, Jeannine Bischoff, Lewis Doney, Jörg Heimbel and Emilia Roza Sulek. 83 papers were presented in both panel sessions and poster presentations. The proceedings of the conference were published in the 2016 December Special Issue of the esteemed peer-review journal Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines. The fifth International Seminar of Young Tibetologists will be held in St Petersburg, Russia, in the summer of 2018.
Governance
The governing board of the ISYT consists of the President, Secretary General and Advisors. Brandon Dotson has served as the President and Tim Myatt as the Secretary General of ISYT from 2007–2012. Brandon Dotson is Associate Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University and Tim Myatt completed his doctorate in Anglo-Tibetan relations at the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, England. Seiji Kumagai, an Associate Professor at the Department of Bhutanese Studies in Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan, served as the Secretary General of ISYT from 2012–2015. The current President of ISYT is Kalsang Norbu Gurung. He currently works on a project, "Social History of Tibetan Societies" at the Department of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies at Bonn University in Bonn, Germany. The current Secretary General of ISYT is Lewis Doney. He is a Research Assistant on the project "Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State" at the British Museum in London, United Kingdom.
