Buddhism and Art from Transregional and Cross-Cultural Perspectives – Panelists

Dipen Barua serves as an honorary lecturer at the Centre of Buddhist Studies at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and as a visiting assistant professor at the Buddha-Dharma Centre of Hong Kong. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Calcutta University and his first Master’s degree in Pali from University of Pune (now Savitribai Phule Pune University) in India. He received a second Master’s degree, MPhil and PhD in Buddhist Studies from HKU. He is an author of a book and has published many articles in both Bengali and English. His academic interests are Pali textual studies, the Theravada Buddhists perspective on the mind and cognitive functions, modern movements of engaged Buddhism, and the Buddhist art and cultural heritage in South and Southeast Asia. Additionally, he is a regular contributor to Buddhistdoor Global, a Hong Kong based website, where he writes on topics related to Buddhism and society.

Dr Michael Cavayero is an Assistant Professor in the School of Arts at Peking University and a Research Professor at Peking University’s Research Center for Aesthetics and Aesthetic Education. He is the recipient of a 2023 UNESCO Silk Road’s Youth Research Grant. He formerly served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of South Asian Studies and the Research Center for Buddhist Texts and Art at Peking University. Cavayero’s research focuses on Buddhism’s dissemination and Sinicization process in medieval China and the early textual history of Chinese painting. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (cum laude) from New York University, Steinhardt, having completed his master’s and PhD degrees at the China Academy of Art (Chinese National Academy of Art). His research and translations have been published extensively in international peer-reviewed journals in both English and Chinese.

柯偉業（Michael Cavayero），美國人，美國紐約大學（New York University）本科，中國美術學院碩士、博士，北京大學外國語學院南亞學系(國際交流計劃引進項目)博雅博士後，現為北京大學藝術學院助理教授、研究員，北京大學美學與美育研究中心研究員。2023聯合國教育、科學及文化組織（ UNESCO ）「絲綢之路青年研究基金」獲得者。主要研究美術史、佛教史。著有Disciplinary Rituals in Dunhuang Buddhism (Brill)（譯著/合譯），並在《北京大學學報(哲學社會科學版)》《世界宗教文化》《新美術》，Special Supplement of the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies，《華林國際佛學學刊》等期刊發有論文。

陳芷南於2022年取得了華盛頓大學亞洲語言於文學的博士學位。她的學術研究興趣包括敦煌寫本，中古時期的物質文化，以及文學和思想史。

Jessica Marie Falcone博士任堪薩斯州立大學文化人類學教授。研究方向是當代亞洲跨國宗教文化，並在亞洲各地及亞裔散居地進行了實地考察。她的第一本專著，《與大慈佛陀作戰：未起之大像》，講述了印度一個有爭議的巨型雕像工程，康奈爾大學出版社2018年出版。當前正研究夏威夷一座由日本移民在一百多年前所建的曹洞宗寺廟，並在撰寫該寺豐富的當代儀式和社會生活方面的專著。

Dr. Huang Lele is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of South Asian Studies, School of Foreign Languages, Peking University, and gets her Ph.D. in Buddhist Art History from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. She serves as a visiting lecturer at the International Buddhist Studies College, Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, Thailand, and as an editorial board member for Asia Social Issues, a journal of Walailak University, Thailand. Her primary research interests include the history of Indian Buddhist art, Southeast Asian Buddhist art, and South and Southeast Asian cultures, with a current focus on Indian rock-cut temple art and South Indian Buddhist art.

Todd Lewis is the Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Religion at the College of the Holy Cross. His primary research since 1979 has been on Newar Buddhism in the Kathmandu Valley and the social history of Buddhism. Since completing his Ph.D. (Columbia, 1984), Lewis has authored many articles on the Buddhist traditions of Nepal and a number of books. His translation, Sugata Saurabha: A Poem on the Life of the Buddha by Chittadhar Hridaya of Nepal (Oxford 2010), received awards from the Khyentse Foundation and the Numata Foundation. His most recent publication with Jinah Kim, is Dharma and Punya: Buddhist Ritual Art of Nepal (Brill 2019). Other writings have focused on the role of merchants in Buddhist history, Buddhist social history, and the history of Buddhist ritualism.

陸濤（Todd Lewis）是麻薩諸塞州和理大學（College of Holy Cross）藝術與人文學的傑出教授，兼任哈佛大學附屬研究員。從1979年至今，他主要的研究是尼泊爾加德滿都山谷的尼瓦爾佛教和佛教社會史。1984年獲得哥倫比亞大學博士學位，發表多篇尼泊爾佛教研究論文以及數部專著，包括《流行於尼泊爾的佛教文本：尼瓦爾佛教的敘述和儀式》。另有著作探討商人在佛教歷史中的作用、佛教社會史和佛教儀式史。譯作《正覺者的芬芳：尼泊爾Chittadhar Hridaya關於佛陀一生的詩篇》(牛津大學出版社，2010年)，獲得欽哲基金和沼田基金會的獎勵。他最近與金珍娜合著有《佛法和功德：尼泊爾的佛教儀式藝術》（Brill，2019年）。曾獲得古根海姆獎（Guggenheim Fellow），以及福佈萊特基金會（Fulbright Foundation）、美國哲學會（American Philosophical Society）和國家人文基金會（National Endowment for the Humanities）等項獎金資助。

Wei LI (born in 1991) received his Doctoral degree of Literature from Peking University and currently serves as an associate professor at the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Henan University, where he also fulfills the role of a supervisor for master’s students. His teaching portfolio includes courses such as “The History of Classical Chinese Literature,” “Classical Chinese Literary Theory,” and “Fictions of the Six Dynasties,” among others. His academic pursuits are centered on Buddhist Avadāna literature, the history of Classical Chinese literature, and the literary theories of the Six Dynasties. His research delves into the intricate relationship between Chinese Buddhism and literature, exploring topics such as novels, poems and Buddhist biographies in early medieval China. Additionally, he is actively involved in the translation of Buddhist scriptures into English, bridging cultural gaps and facilitating a deeper understanding of Buddhist teachings. He authored a translated work and published numerous research papers in prestigious journals, including World Religions Research, Religions, and Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies. He also leads a social science project funded by the Henan Provincial Government.

英國劍橋大學副院士，香港大學哲學博士。中國敦煌吐魯番學會會員。香港大學饒宗頤學術館名譽副研究員藝術顧問、饒學研究基金專案評審委員會會員、饒學聯滙榮譽顧問。著作《觀心自在：香港觀音誕與觀音信仰探源》（天地圖書2020年，首屆「想創你未來 —— 初創作家出版資助計劃」（非遺組）得獎作品，並榮獲第三屆「香港出版雙年獎」社會科學類出版獎, 2021），及著《緣繋敦煌》（中華書局2021年） 。

Nils Martin (PhD Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 2022) is an art historian specialized in the Buddhist art of Tibet and the Himalayas, with particular expertise in epigraphy and archaeometry. He has worked extensively on the early painted Buddhist monuments, rock-carvings, and epigraphic sites of Ladakh (India), from the Tibetan imperial period to the Namgyal dynasty. His PhD thesis, which won the Khyentse Foundation award for best dissertation in Buddhist studies, discusses in particular the murals of the Wanla Group (c. 14^th century). Currently a postdoctoral researcher for the ERC-funded Van Manen Project (“Locating Literature, Lived Religion, and Lives in the Himalayas: The Van Manen Collection”) at Leiden University, Martin examines the creation, use, and circulation of the objects of that collection from the Himalayas to the World Museum Leiden.

Thomas J. Mazanec (Ph.D., Princeton, 2017) is associate professor or premodern Chinese literature and culture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he also serves as the Acting Director of Translation Studies. His first book, Poet-Monks: The Invention of Buddhist Poetry in Late Medieval China, was published by Cornell University Press in 2024. He is also the East Asia section editor for the Journal of the American Oriental Society. His current projects include translations several Tang literary collections and a new literary history of the Tang-Song transition.

David L. McMahan is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2023), The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford University Press, 2008), Empty Vision: Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahāyāna Buddhism (Routledge Curzon, 2002), and numerous articles on Mahāyāna Buddhism in South Asia and Buddhism in the modern world.  He is also the co-editor of Buddhism, Meditation and Science (Oxford University Press, 2017), editor of Buddhism in the Modern World (Routledge 2012).  He has written on Indian Buddhist literature, visual metaphors and practice, and the early history of the Mahāyāna movement in India.  More recently, his work has focused on the interface of Buddhism and modernity, including its interactions with science, psychology, modernist literature, romanticism, and transcendentalism.  His most recent work addresses the various ways that Buddhist and Buddhist-derived meditation are understood and practiced in different cultural and historical contexts, ancient and modern.

Dr Wendelin Morrison is an independent scholar and artist based in Dorset, UK, she received her BA/MA in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, and was a visiting researcher at the University of Science and Technology Institute for Cultural Heritage and History of Science and Technology, Beijing for her dissertation research.

Following receiving her doctoral degree in Archaeology from the University of York in 2009, Dr Morrison’s research has developed to integrate scholarly and artistic practice methods. With her artistic practice starting in childhood, taught by her mother who was an architect and sumi-e artist, Dr Morrison began training in the traditional art of Tibetan thangka in 2007, and has been mentored by the Tibetan-Bhutanese traditional architect and artist Pema Namdol-Thaye since 2018. Her particular research interests include the Tibetan, and

Sino-Tibetan syncretic Buddhist art and drawings from Mogao, Buddhist materia medica and soteriological paintings, and architectural iconometry as a form of artistic transmission in the Buddhist cave temples of the medieval Silk Road. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Dr Morrison has recently undertaken research on the Tara thangka from the Temple of the Thousand Buddhas ‘Store Cave’ at Mogao, Dunhuang in NW China, which was supported by the Frederick Williamson Memorial Trust, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. She is currently developing a project on geolocation and the transcultural use of minerals in Buddhist art as a coalescence of medicine and paint pigments.

Wendelin Morrison博士是英國多塞特郡的獨立學者和藝術家，她在劍橋大學獲得考古學和人類學學士/碩士學位，並曾作為客座研究員在北京科技大學文化遺產與科技史研究所進行論文研究。2009 年，Morrison博士在約克大學獲得考古學博士學位後，其研究已發展為將學術和藝術實踐方法相結合。Morrison博士從小就開始從事藝術實踐，其母親是一名建築師和水墨畫    家。2007 年開始接受西藏傳統唐卡藝術的培訓，自 2018 年起接受藏族-不丹傳統建築師和藝術家 Pema Namdol-Thaye 的指導。她的研究興趣尤其包括莫高窟的吐蕃和漢藏融合佛教藝術和繪畫、佛教本草和救世畫，以及建築造像量度作為中世紀絲綢之路佛教石窟藝術傳播的一種形式。作為皇家亞洲學會會員，Morrison博士最近對敦煌莫高窟千佛洞“藏經洞”的度母唐卡進行了研究，該研究得到了劍橋大學考古與人類學博物館弗雷德里克威廉森紀念信託基金的支持。她目前正在開展一個關於地理定位以及佛教藝術中礦物質的跨文化應用的項目，作為藥物和繪畫顏料的融合。

薄樂陀擔任聖路易斯華盛頓大學東亞宗教講師。專業領域是前現代日本的社會和宗教歷史，重點是中世紀早期（約10至13世紀）的佛教。他於2020年在哥倫比亞大學獲得博士學位，論文題為《中世紀早期日本的治療文化：前現代認識論研究》。論文研究了有關治療和疾病的論域和實踐，特別關注佛教治療士和其他醫療技術人員之間的關係，即宮廷醫生和陰陽師。其他研究和教學興趣包括對前現代東亞自然災害的理解和對治儀法，朝鮮半島和日本列島之間的文化交流歷史，以及東亞的佛教物質文化和考古學。曾在京都大學擔任日本學術振興會博士後研究員。

His dissertation, which he is turning into a monograph, is titled Reimagining India between Science and Religion: Indology and Modernity in Japanese Buddhism, and shows the active role of Japanese Buddhists in redeploying ideas and images on India in scholarship, literature, and visual culture to inform the role of religion in modern Japan.

At Ghent University, Stortini is developing a second project titled Building Buddhist Heritage in Postwar Japan: The Silk Road between History and Memory at Yakushiji Temple. This project explores the concept of “Silk Road” in twentieth century Japan, at the intersection between cultural heritage, religious practices of memorialization and pilgrimage, and media representation of travel and “Buddhist cosmopolitanism,” centering on the case study of the temple and Buddhist community of Yakushiji, Nara Prefecture.

Dr. Dessie Vendova 文黛皙 is currently the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Buddhism Public Scholar at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with a Ph.D. in Religion (Buddhism) from Columbia University with a focus on early Buddhism and art. Before her doctoral studies at Columbia University, she spent eleven years studying and living in Beijing and Kyoto, earning a B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature and an M.A. in Classical Chinese Literature from Peking University, focusing on pre-Tang and Tang dynasty literature, religion, and culture. She has also participated in wide-ranging field research and language study in India and Pakistan.

Dr. Vendova’s research focuses on the life story of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, exploring its narratives and art at the intersection of religion, literature, and visual culture. She is particularly interested in reevaluating the critical role of the Buddha’s biography on the early textual, visual, and material transmission of Buddhism from South Asia, through Central Asia to East Asia, including via the Silk Routes, and its role and function in the construction of early Buddhist sacred monuments, Buddhist practices connected with the cult of the historical Buddha, and the worship of the Bodhisattva/Buddha’s image.

王冰，香港大學佛學碩士、哲學博士。現任香港珠海學院佛學研究中心助理教授及副總監（行政），教授「佛教與當代社會」、「中國文化概論」等課程。研究興趣包括宗教教育（佛教）與生命教育、宗教教育課程設計與發展、兒童與青少年德育及價值教育。曾兼任香港大學專職研究員(2018-2021)、慈山寺項目顧問(2010-2020)。自2007年始，相繼參與香港大學佛學研究中心「如何利用佛教資源推動香港中小學學生質素教育」研究計劃，以及「初中佛化德育及價值教育科教材（中一至中三)」編寫計劃。著有《建築慈山》（與何培斌教授合著）、《正覺的道路：初中佛化德育及價值教育科教材》（12冊，與衍空法師合著）、主編佛教教育系列「三合一十全人格繪本」（香港新雅出版，系列獲中國2009年「冰心兒童圖書獎」，是《請給我一粒芥菜子》、《原來大人也會犯錯》等繪本文字作者。王冰博士亦擔任香港佛教聯合會佛化教育平臺顧問及非牟利民間機構晨曦青少年文教基金會暨文教中心發起人。

Eugene Wang is Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author of the award-winning Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture in Medieval China. He is also the art history editor of Encyclopedia of Buddhism. His research ranges from early Chinese art and archaeology to modern Chinese art, media, and cinema. He is also the founding director of Harvard CAMLab that explores the nexus of cognition, aesthetics, and new mediums.

汪悅進（Eugene Wang），哈佛大學洛克菲勒亞洲藝術史專席教授，任教於哈佛藝術與建築史系、宗教研究系、戲劇舞蹈多媒系、中亞系。著述涵蓋古今，包括青銅、壁畫、雕塑、書畫、建築、版刻、攝影，電影等多種媒介。曾獲古根海姆獎。專著《塑造法華經：中國中古佛教視覺文化》獲2006年日本坂本日深學術賞。任《佛教百科全書》的藝術史編輯。2018年創立哈佛大學CAMLab，研發藝術智能及文化遺產的深度多媒體驗。

Wang Youkui is a native of Zhijiang, Hubei Province, China, and an associate professor at the College of Fine Arts, Sichuan University. He is engaged in the study of Buddhist material culture and Sino-foreign cultural exchange. In the past, he has mainly focused on the Buddhist beliefs reflected in the grottoes, initiated a systematic discussion on the Yungang Grottoes, and explored a number of examples of material cultural exchanges between Chinese and foreign cultures in the Middle Ages. He has published more than ten academic papers in journals such as Dunhuang Research, Art History Research, Journal of Nanjing Arts Institute, and Dunhuang Studies Journal, and has presided over and participated in several projects of the National Social Science Foundation.

Wu Shaowei is an Associate Professor at Shandong University. His primary research areas include Sui-Tang history, Dunhuang Studies, and Buddhist history. He has published over twenty academic articles, including “A Study on the Literacy Rate of Buddhist Monks in Dunhuang during the Late Tang, Five Dynasties, and Early Song Period”, “The Reasons for Dunhuang Monks Residing in Secular Families during the Late Tang, Five Dynasties, and Early Song Period: A Socio-Economic Perspective”, “The Unknown Monk’s Mountaineering Career: Daily Scripture Copying and Textual Criticism Activities of Monks in the Medieval Period”, and “From Veneration to Restriction: Two Eras in the Life of Monk Yihong during the Tang Dynasty”.

His recent research interests focus on the production of Buddhist sutra copying in ancient China, the literacy rate among monastic communities, and the Huichang Persecution of Buddhism.

ZHANG Meiqiao received her PhD in 2022 from the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies in Tokyo, Japan, with a dissertation on the transmission and transformation of the Mahāprajñāpāramitāsūtra 大般若波羅蜜多經. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. Her research concentrates chiefly on manuscript and ancient woodblock editions of the Chinese Buddhist literature. Her research interests include the history of Buddhism in Medieval China, Chinese Buddhist canons, and the cultural history of communication between China and her neighbors.