Paige ScanlonUndergraduate Humanities Honors Fellow

Paige Scanlon is a senior studying Religion and Interdisciplinary Studies of Society and Culture.

Her honors thesis titled “Tibetan Buddhist Nuns and Pedagogical Relationships: Exploring Mentorship in Exiled Communities” investigates social learning and lived religion among nuns living in diaspora from Tibet. She is engaging primarily in multi-sited ethnographic methods in Dharamsala, India and Atlanta, Georgia.Current scholarship on Tibetan Buddhist nun communities typically centers their lack of educational resources compared to monks, their male counterparts. Paige’s research seeks to elevate the life stories of these women and instead focuses on how the nuns leverage their relationships within the nunnery to create flourishing learning communities. She has heavily consulted with the Tenzin Gyatso Scholars—a cohort of two nuns and four monks studying at Emory—in these efforts.