International Cooperation

The ISTB has a lively and multifaceted publication exchange with many international academic institutions where related research is being conducted.

Scholars from India, Tibet, China, Japan, Hungary, Poland, Italy, North America, and other countries are regularly present in the Department as guest researchers. Foreign students and post-docs mainly hail from Japan and Germany, but frequently also come from China, Taiwan, South Korea, France, Italy, Hungary and Poland. The members of the ISTB regularly visit the geographical regions and international academic institutions relevant to their research interests in order to conduct field work and other research or to cooperate with colleagues. In addition to a number of contacts specific to individual research projects, special agreements of cooperation exist between the ISTB and the Academy of Sciences at Göttingen, Germany, the Instytut Filologii Orientalnej of the Jagiellonian University, Cracow, the Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, Rome, the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences, Lhasa, academically closely related departments of the Universities of Kyoto and Hiroshima, and the Tibet Research Centre, Beijing. The Department has been established as the centre of an international research group of scholars currently based in Italy, New Zealand, Germany, England, India, Switzerland and the US who are concerned with the exploration and study of the manuscripts of Tabo in the Western Himalayas.

In March 2011, the ISTB has concluded an agreement of academic cooperation and student exchange with the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute, Kathmandu.

In 2013, the Khyentse Foundation has awarded funding to the Institute of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (ISTB) at the University of Vienna in order to develop a training program for translators of Buddhist literature.