I am a scholar, educator, and consultant with a lifelong interest in meditation as a motor of change. Initially a scholar of Western philosophy, my focus later shifted to the study of the rich universe of contemplative practices in the context of India, Tibet, and the larger Himalayan region. Today, I experiment with ways to use my expertise regarding the practice of meditation to positively impact the world we live in, particularly through writing, university teaching, and leadership consulting.
My career is marked by a far-reaching international itinerary, which allowed me to acquire proficiency in more than a dozen ancient and modern languages while spending my adult life in nine different countries on four continents. I earned two PhDs from the universities of Virginia (2018) and Bern (2019), as well as an Executive MBA at HEC Paris (expected 2025). I conducted extensive field- and archival research in Italy, India, and Nepal. An experienced lecturer and teacher, I offered undergraduate and graduate courses at universities in Switzerland, the United States, and Israel. I am currently an Azrieli postdoctoral fellow in the departments of Comparative Religion and Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
My research has been funded by the United States Department of Education (Foreign Language and Area Studies, Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad), the Swiss National Science Foundation (doc.mobility), the Dr. Josephine de Karman Foundation, the Khyentse Foundation, the Lady Davis Foundation, the Mandel Scholion Research Center, and the Azrieli Foundation. I published numerous peer-reviewed articles, as well as two monographs entitled The Life and Work of Ernesto De Martino (Brill, 2021) and Tibetan Sky-Gazing Meditation and the Pre-History of Great Perfection Buddhism (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Although eclectic in my thinking, my lifework is encapsulated in the study of a variegated corpus of meditation exercises in order to understand, explain, and actualize their transformative power. Specifically, I explore meditation as a transformational practice in three arenas:
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History of Religions: Understand how, when, and why contemplative practices were developed by studying these spiritual traditions in their rich historical-cultural context.
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Contemplative Science: Explain how meditation works and why it changes our mind, brains, and bodies by relying on interdisciplinary methods that bring the cultural study of meditation into contact with the cognitive sciences.
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Leadership Consulting: Actualize my scholarly and scientific expertise to transmit the world's most powerful meditation techniques in support of transformational leaders in a rapidly changing world.
