Dr. Gyal Lo received his PhD from the University of Toronto, and was awarded Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) Fellowship for his research entitled “Culturally-Relevant Education for Minority and Rural Village in Asia.” He taught as a faculty member at the Department of Tibetan Language and

Culture for over a decade, the Northwest University for Nationalities. Recently, he was appointed as a prioritized Full Professor at the Yunnan Normal University (YNU). His research interests cover Educational Sociology, Tibetan Buddhism in Society, Mother Tongue in schooling and its Policy, Social-Cultural Reproduction, Sociological Studies of Spirituality, and Multilingualism. In 2020, as the political climate changed, the YNU terminated his contract that he was a foreign Tibetan and thus a potential political liability in an increasingly authoritarian China. He left China on December 31, 2020 and has decided not to return because it has serious risks in making a meaningful contribution to Tibetan education, and in order to alert the international community to the dire threats posed to the collective well-being of the Tibetan people and the survival of Tibet’s language, religion, and culture. He authored a LEXINGTON BOOKS: Social Structuration in Tibetan Society: Education, Society, and Spirituality.