From 1987, Gruschke worked as a free-lance
writer and
picture-journalist with the main topics
Tibet,
Himalayas,
Silk Road and East Asia. He held lectures and seminars at his hometown
Freiburg and other places. After finishing his university studies, he went on numerous research trips to
Southeast Asia,
China,
Korea,
Central Asia, yet most of them led him to the highland of Tibet. From 2004 to 2012 he worked at
Leipzig University, doing research on Tibetan pastoralists in eastern Tibet's Yushu area. From 2012, he was a guest professor at the Institute of Social Development and Western China Development Studies at
Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. His main research interest was the livelihood security of the rural population, namely pastoralists, in China's Tibetan areas.[3]
Gruschke published numerous books and articles mainly on Tibetan culture, among them pioneering works for
monasteries in the East Tibetan regions
Amdo and
Kham. Other books and reports deal with
Korea and the Himalayas and China, as well as two picture albums about his homeland: the
Hegau and the upper
Rhine. His most recent research was about
nomads in the eastern Tibetan region of
Yushu (northern
Kham).
Works
The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: Amdo, 2 vols., Bangkok 2001
The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: Kham, 2 vols., Bangkok 2004 ff.
"Nomads Without Pastures? Globalization, Regionalization, and Livelihood Security of Nomads and Former Nomads in Northern Khams," in: Ken Bauer, Geoff Childs, Andrew Fischer, and Daniel Winkler (eds.), In the Shadow of the Leaping Dragon: Demography, Development, and the Environment in Tibetan Areas, in:
JIATS, 4 (December 2008).
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"Nomads and their Market Relations in Eastern Tibet’s Yushu Region: The Impact of Caterpillar Fungus." In: Jörg Gertel & Richard LeHeron(eds.): Economic Spaces of Pastoral Production and Commodity Systems. Markets and Livelihoods. Ashgate: Farnham - Burlington 2011, pp. 211–229.
"Tibetan Pastoralists in Transition. Political Change and State Interventions in Nomad Societies." In: Hermann Kreutzmann (ed.): Pastoral Practices in High Asia. Agency of ‘Development’ Effected by Modernisation, Resettlement and Transformation (Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research). Springer: Dordrecht 2012, pp. 273–289.