Dr. David Fiordalis joined 84000 in July 2022 after more than twenty years in higher education, beginning in the fall of 2001 as an adjunct instructor of writing, communication, and the humanities at the City Colleges of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. His work has let him pursue a lifelong interest in the histories, cultures, and religions of Asia, particularly South Asia and the Himalayan region, an interest that began in early childhood in Hindu satsangs and ashrams in the United States and deepened as a teenager, when he had the opportunity to live and work among brahmin priests from India.

As an undergraduate at Carleton College in Minnesota, Dr. Fiordalis began the formal study of Sanskrit and Marathi under Roger Jackson and Eleanor Zelliot. He then received a Fulbright scholarship to research modern Sanskrit education in India before earning a Master of Divinity from the University of Chicago in 2001. He completed his doctorate in Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, where Luis Gómez served as his dissertation advisor, Gareth Sparham was his first teacher of Tibetan, and Madhav Deshpande tutored him in Pali and Prakrit.

After temporary teaching positions at Albion College in Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Dr. Fiordalis joined the faculty at Linfield University in Oregon, where he taught and chaired the Department of Religion from 2011 to 2025, earning tenure in 2015. Over the course of his career he has also taught at Buddhist institutions of higher education, including the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu and Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon. His publications include scholarly articles, book chapters, and translations, as well as an edited volume on Buddhist philosophy as a form of spiritual practice.

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