Jetsun Deleplanque

Jetsun Deleplanque is the 2024-2025 Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. His research and teaching expertise covers Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist history, sociology and literature, with a particular interest in questions related to religion and political power and the construction of religious authority. He received his PhD in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago’s Divinity school. His current book project, drawing from his doctoral thesis entitled, “Visions of Theocracy: The Rise of Ecclesiastical Power in Tibet and the Founding of the Bhutanese State,” explores the dynamics that led to the founding of theocratic movements in the Tibetan region during the seventeenth century, with a focus on the Drukpa (’brug pa) theocracy known today as the Kingdom of Bhutan. He received a Masters of Theological Studies (MTS) from the Harvard Divinity School and a B.A from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London.