Dr Elizabeth McDougal

 Dr Elizabeth McDougal grew up in Western Canada, and then trained as a Buddhist nun in India and on the Tibetan Plateau for seventeen years. She studied a Masters of Indian philosophy at Banaras Hindu University, and a PhD (2021) at the University of Sydney on the modernisation of Tibetan Buddhist meditation lineages. She has taught in the Primary Ethics program (NSW) and an Australian natural health college, and is a Tibetan-to-English translator for the teachings of a lineage of contemplative nuns.

She is the co-founder of Gebchak Rigpa Harsey, an Australian charity for Tibetan nuns and schoolchildren, and a researcher with the Mental Balance Initiative (Center for Contemplative Research) and the Community Economies Research Network (CERN).

Inspired by the transformative learning systems of pre-modern Buddhist traditions, her passion is for adapting contemplative pedagogy in creative ways that can usher the emergence of new, holistic ways of knowing in our current world.