Faculty Mentor

Professor Simon Wickhamsmith was born on the south coast of England and received a BA(Hons) in English language and Literature from King’s College London. He spent the next seventeen years on the road, as a Buddhist monk in Scotland and Oxford, as an ESL teacher in Oxford and Leipzig, Germany, as a composer of electronic and computer music (releasing music and playing concerts and festivals in Lithuania, Finland, France, Belgium, Germany, Slovenia, Australia, and the USA), and as an independent researcher and translate of Tibetan Buddhist texts (particularly the weird and uncertain life of the Sixth Dalai Lama), and of Mongolian literature. He returned to formal education in 2009, receiving his MA and PhD from the University of Washington, specializing on modern and contemporary Mongolian literature. He teaches in the Rutgers Writing Program, and is also affiliated faculty in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and in the Program in South Asian Studies. He spends most summers visiting his wife’s family in South Korea and researching while drinking vodka in Mongolia.