Tomo Vinšćak, dr. sc., Associate Professor (1951-2013)

Biography

Prof Tomo Vinšćak, PhD, served as the Head of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. He graduated in 1980, earned his master’s degree in 1985 and obtained his doctorate in 1997 from the Department of Ethnology, where he had been employed since 1981. He was appointed to the rank of Associate Professor in 2011.

Within the ethnology and cultural anthropology study programme, he taught courses in the fields of shamanism, national ethnology, and the cultures of Western, Southeast and High Asia. He was a member of the Croatian Ethnological Society, where he served as secretary, vice-president and president, and he was the editor of the journals Studia ethnologica Croatica and Etnološka tribina.

He led expert research expeditions titled Peoples and Cultures of Nepal and Tibet (1993, 1999–2006) as well as research into the rituals and customs of Tibetan Buddhism. He was the project leader for Sacred Interpretation of Landscape, funded by the Ministry of Science of the Republic of Croatia, under which he conducted systematic research into the remnants of pre-Christian beliefs in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine.

He published 17 scientific papers, two books, 12 professional papers and numerous popular-science articles. He participated in numerous domestic and international scientific conferences, where he presented documentary films alongside his conference presentations. He served as a reviewer and editor for multiple books and university textbooks, and delivered a series of public lectures on his research work both in Croatia and abroad.