By Ashley Blake
Ashley Blake research MA Art History and the Conservation of Buddhist Heritage, with a specific deal with modern Tibet. He joined the Courtauld Institute in September 2025 after finishing his BA Historical past of Artwork on the College of York. His undergraduate dissertation examined self-portraiture within the Pitt Rivers Museum’s 2019 exhibition Performing Tibetan Identities, analysing how artists negotiate the stability between custom and modernity.
Final summer time, he undertook an internship with College students for a Free Tibet in New York, contributing to analysis on the repatriation of Tibetan cultural objects from the US to the Chinese language authorities and its wider implications. He now serves because the organisation’s London Campaigns Coordinator.
His MA dissertation will discover the intersection of Buddhism and politics throughout Tibet, Japan, and China, together with the gendered illustration of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara (also called Chenrezig, Kannon, or Guanyin). Ashley intends to pursue a profession in human rights work, specializing in how Tibetan histories are constructed, contested, and communicated via media, artwork, and curation practices.
