From the website:
The Dalai Lamas are arguably the most important leaders of Tibetan Buddhism, so much so that it is not possible to understand Tibetan history since 1600 without understanding the institution of the Dalai Lamas. The biographies of the Dalai Lamas form the most important resources for understanding the history of the Dalai Lamas as individuals, as members of an ecclesiastic and political institution, and as subjects of literary and rhetorical invention, and yet these challenging works of literature have received scant and theoretically inadequate attention within contemporary scholarship.
"Mapping the Dalai Lamas" intends to integrate digital texts of classical Tibetan-language biographies with digtal animated maps, timelines, and images to present significant events in the lives of the Dalai Lamas as well as to reveal hitherto unnoticed connections between biographical events, geographic location, social and historical context, and literary and rhetorical expression.