Born in Tibet, Dr. Gyal Lo completed his early education in his home region before earning a master’s degree in Tibetan Language and Culture from Northwest Minzu University in Lanzhou, China. In 1995, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the same department, where he taught for a decade and conducted extensive research on Tibetan education.

Dr. Gyal Lo later pursued a Master of Education and a PhD in the Sociology of Education at the University of Toronto. Upon returning to China, he was denied reemployment at his former institution due to political sensitivities related to his Western academic training. From 2017 to 2020, he served as Full Professor at the Institute for Studies in Education at Yunnan Normal University.

In 2020, amid an increasingly authoritarian political environment, Dr. Gyal Lo’s five-year contract was terminated on the grounds that he was a “foreign Tibetan” with a Western background and therefore considered a potential political risk. He left China on December 31, 2020, and has chosen not to return due to the dangers associated with conducting independent research on Tibetan education and society.

Dr. Gyal Lo now focuses on alerting the international community to the severe threats facing Tibetan society, particularly the survival of its language, religion, and culture. He is the author of Social Structuration in Tibetan Society: Education, Society, and Spirituality (Lexington Books, 2016).