Contact
Email
Location
ILC N324

Interests

My interdisciplinary approach to scholarship examines how human communication practices—especially those shaped by emerging media—advance social change, with particular attention to gender and climate justice. Drawing on intersections among communication studies, new media, critical feminist theory, cultural anthropology, and lived experience, I seek to generate knowledge that challenges and intervenes in systemic structures of power and injustice.

Education

PhD, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

MSc, University of Edinburgh                                                           

MA, Madras University, India 

Courses Taught

COMM 221: Communication for Sustaining Social Change

COMM 260: Public Speaking

COMM 375: Writing as Communication 

Publications

Sharling, D. (2025). Identity, resilience, mobilisation, and homeland relations: the shaping of Tibetan diaspora. South Asian Diaspora, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/19438192.2025.2560712

Sharling, T. D. (2022). Theorizing a female Dalai Lama: An intersectional tool for feminisms. Anthropology of Consciousness, 33(1), 71–87.  https://doi.org/10.1111/anoc.12146

Sharling, T. D. (2021). Finding hope in the darkest of days and focus in the brightest: The Dalai Lama’s approach to promoting human values. Coreopsis Journal of Myth & Theatre, 9(2).

Mijares, S., Rafea, A., Sharling, T. D., Amponsem, J., & Mallory, M. (2020). The Power of the Feminine: Facing Shadow, Evoking Light. Egypt: The Human Foundation.

Sharling, T. D. (2013). Tibetan women: Devotedly defiant. In N. Angha, S. G. Mijares, & A. R. Rāfiʻ (Eds.), A Force Such As the World Has Never Known: Women Creating Change (pp. 211–218). Toronto, Canada: Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

Current Projects

Co-investigator of a book project on Democracy in Exile

Core organizing committee member for Year of Compassion: A Massachusetts Tribute to the Dalai Lama at 90

Founding Director of An Interconnected Planet: Toward a Conscious, Responsible, and Sustainable Humanity