Professor Leon E. Pettiway, the Venerable Lobzang Dorje, is Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington, and one of the few ordained African-American Buddhist monks in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He has spent his academic career researching geographical and criminological theories to explain patterns of urban crime. In 2016, he established Dagom Geden Kunkyob Ling Buddhist Monastery in Indianapolis, Indiana.
 
Pettiway has conducted research that integrates geographical and criminological theories to explain crime patterns in urban areas. In that regard, he has published articles on the impact of race and ghettoization in patterns of crime participation, the role of environmental and individual factors in arson, the relationship between an individual’s drug use and criminal participation in the formation of crime partnerships, and the criminal decision-making process of addicts and nonusers in light of various environmental cues.
 
Upon the conclusion of a major field research project funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Pettiway completed Honey, Honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, Gay, and on the Streets, a finalist for the 9th Annual Lambda Literary Award (Temple University Press), which examined the lives of drug-addicted, gay transgender women who commit a variety of crimes, and Workin’ It: Women Living Through Drugs and Crime (Temple University Press), which chronicled the drug use and crime participation of a group of inner-city women. His current intellectual work centers on the construction of knowledge, the roots of social inequality, and how Eastern and Western philosophical traditions might be integrated into criminology and the administration of justice. He is committed to investigating the social, economic, and political issues that influence all sentient beings.