The Glorisun Network partners offer partial and full fellowships for Masters and Ph.D. students. Recipients of these fellowships will have the opportunity to participate in a multi-year international and interdisciplinary project, sponsored by SSHRC and led by Jinhua Chen (titled: From the Ground Up: East Asian Religions through Multi-Media Sources and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 2016–2023). The fellowships offer opportunities to participate in research visits to East Asia, and to interact with international scholars and students to develop skills in working with local partners and international peers. Recipients may also receive training on how to identify, document, photograph and transcribe primary source materials. Students will learn to work in diverse multicultural, international, and interdisciplinary environments.
Hamburg University
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Ruilong GONG
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2024-2027 | Ruilong Gong is a Ph.D. student currently working in the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at the University of Hamburg. He got a Bachelor’s degree of Science in Material Chemistry and a Bachelor’s degree of Literature in Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University in 2018. From 2019 to 2023, he got his
M.A. degree in Chinese Literature at National Taiwan University with a thesis titled A Study of the Book Format and Reading Method of Six Dynasties: A Case Study of Tao Yuan-Ming. During the study of his M.A., Gong gradually noticed some textual phenomena that can be traced back to the early China, in multiple-text manuscripts from Dunhuang, and published several papers on this topic. Thanks to the Glorisun Fellowship, he is able to continue to explore the text generation and circulation in ancient Chinese manuscripts with the Ph.D. project at the University of Hamburg, studying the paratexts and addenda at the end of scrolls including the Buddhist and non-religious texts in the early and medieval China, via textual and manuscriptological perspectives. |
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Yu GAO
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2019-2022 | With a B.A. in Law, Yu Gao has been trained both in Anthropology at East China Normal University (M.A. 2015), and Chinese Studies at Chinese University of Hong Kong (M.Phil. 2017). From 2012 to 2015, she explored the interrelations among the state, the temple, and the followers in a Buddhist temple in Hangzhou. From 2015 to 2017, she focused on popular religions in local society in late imperial China with a historical anthropology approach. Thanks to the Glorisun Fellowship, she could continue to explore her interest in Chinese religions with the Ph.D. project, studying the China branch of the transnational Buddhist monastery Foguangshan via the historical and anthropological approaches at Hamburg University. During the last two years, after several field visits to the cities in the Yangtze River Delta, now she is back in Hamburg to work on the final dissertation. |
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LIU Chen
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2021-2022 | Chen Liu is a Ph.D. student currently working in the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) and the Asia-Africa-Institute (AAI) in Hamburg University. Her Bachelor and M.A. are both English major, and she got her Bachelor’s degree at Hebei University in English philology in 2007-2011 and her M.A. at Tianjin University of Commerce in “Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics” in 2011-2014. During the study of her M.A., Chen Liu gradually learned several languages, such as French, Latin, and Sanskrit. She has learned Sanskrit in CASS in Peking, and after one year and a half learning, also learned Palī language as a beginner.
At that time, she had read some classic Sanskrit texts and Buddhism canon and gotten very interested in Buddhism, Buddhist languages and cultures. Therefore, she gave up enrolment of the teaching job at her M.A. University and continued her career in Buddhist studies with her parents’ support. She learned Tibetan and Sanskrit chanting in 2014-2016 and enrolled in Tsinghua University as a Ph.D. student in “Minor folks’ languages and literature” of Sinology department in 2017. Chen Liu has learned Tangut and continues learning Tibetan, and has worked on Khara-khoto Manuscripts for three years. Chen Liu came to visit Hamburg University in 2020 and at the same time as Covid 19. Luckily, her supervisor Professor Friedrich accepted her as a student and kindly helped with her life and study in Hamburg, for which she is very grateful. She is currently working on the manuscripts related to Zhijian, a late 10th century Chinese monk and his journey to pursue the true Bodhisattva precepts in India, and enjoys exploring the ritual practices and Zhijian’s idea about the practicing of Bodhisattva precepts in his time. |
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Léo MESSERSCHMID
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2019-2020 | Léo Messerschmid will be finalizing his Ph.D. thesis’ draft (working title “The Tradition of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism in Its Reception in Medieval Japan. A Study of the Keiran shuyôshû and its Chinese Antecedents”). In 2017 he participated in FROGBEAR research cluster in Japan which included field trip to temples, museums, and libraries in the Kyôto area. The trip afforded him the opportunity to access materials he works with first-hand and in their extant manuscript editions. |
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Franz VEIT
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M.A. Fellowship 2018-2019 | After transitioning from South Asian Studies at the University of Heidelberg to Buddhist Studies at Hamburg University, Franz aims to further expand his proficiency in Pali, Sanskrit and Japanese. He is spending the winter term of 2018/2019 at the renowned International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies, Tokyo. He is interested in contemporary, modern and ancient hermeneutical practices across various traditions on questions of ethics and politics, since the dramatic global transformations of societies and their polities in the last two centuries also pose major questions for the exegesis of Buddhist teachings. How should we make sense of “universal monarchs”, royal metaphors and a history of close relations between rulers and Buddhist institutions in post-monarchical worlds? Was Buddhist political praxis and philosophy merely ad hoc and opportunistic or may there be even a consistent attitude in the rājanīti-genre from which one would have to extrapolate towards modern political affiliations? But maybe we find ourselves in a tetralemma between history and philosophy, kings and citizens, as well as between the lovers of wisdom and those of power. |
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LIU Qi
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M.A. Fellowship 2018-2019 | Ms. Liu Qi is enrolled as MA student of Buddhist Studies. For her thesis she uses methods from cultural anthropology and religious studies in order to analyze contemporary practices of sky burial in the Autonomous Region of Tibet and adjacent regions. She currently visits with Professor James Laidlaw, holder of the William Wyse Professorship of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, with the goal of developing methodologies appropriate to her research. She received a one-year scholarship that helps defray her living expenses in Hamburg and Cambridge. |
University of British Columbia
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Jeremy JAMES
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M.A. Fellowship 2022-23 | Jeremy James is an M.A. candidate in Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia and a graduate of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at East China Normal University in Shanghai. His research interests include various aspects of traditional Chinese culture, namely literature, history, philosophy, and religion. Prior to enrolling at the University of British Columbia, he spent several months living with a monastic community at a Chinese Buddhist temple in Canada to learn about their way of life. |
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Xian’ao SHI
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2021-25 | Xian’ao received her M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hong Kong and SOAS, University of London. Currently she is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Asian Studies, UBC. Her research interest includes the history of Chinese Buddhism, Humanistic Buddhism, and topics on Buddhism and modern society. She is now working on her dissertation project on Chinese Buddhist women in the early twentieth century. |
| Mingli SUN | Ph.D. Fellowship 2021-2025 | Mingli Sun is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, as well as a Research Assistant for Frogbear project (https://frogbear.org) and Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies (https://glorisunglobalnetwork.org). Her research area is Tang Buddhism in the regions of Sichuan and two capitals (Chang’an and Luoyang), with a particular focus on multi-media and interdisciplinary studies of texts and images. She has published over the past few years a dozen of journal articles and book chapters both in Chinese and English.
Major publications include：
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Weiyu LIN
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M.A. Fellowship 2018-2020 | Weiyu transitioned from his undergraduate studies of Spanish and French literature to studying Buddhism. In this new field, he retained his inclination to stay close to the text and language. He has started his studies of Tibetan and Japanese, hoping that one day he could traverse across Buddhist scriptures and scholarship with minimum language barrier. As for the classical Chinese, he is putting himself through intensive translation exercises, using primarily Fazang’s philosophical treatises that bear on the practice of panjiao (doctrinal classification). Through translation and annotation, Weiyu wishes to refine his sensitivity to Buddhist language and to make his foray intostudying the intellectual history of medieval Chinese Buddhism. |
University of California, Berkeley
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Howard MU
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M.A. Fellowship 2019-2021 | Howard Mu received a B.A. in Philosophy, and Government and Legal Studies from Bowdoin College (2018), and an M.A. in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley (2021). During the two years of his M.A. program, he studied Sanskrit and Japanese, and completed several research projects on medieval Chinese Buddhist intellectual history. He is primarily interested in Buddhist philosophy, especially Chinese Madhyamaka thought. His research currently focuses on Jizang and his commentaries on Indian Madhyamaka treatises. |
| Zhoulun XIE
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M.A. Fellowship 2019-2021 | With the generous support of the funding, Zhuolun Xie completed an M.A. thesis entitled Rethinking Soushan tu: The Painting of the Search in the Mountains from the Collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Beyond during her time at Berkeley. In 2021, Zhoulun became a Ph.D. student studying premodern Chinese art in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. Her recent research interests include paintings of religious themes from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries, especially their consumption and circulation. She also has an interest in Buddhist visual and material culture in Dunhuang. Zhuolun received her M.A. in Asian Studies from UC Berkeley and her B.A. in Art History from Boston College. |
| Max BRANDSTADT
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2018-2019, 2021 | Max Brandstadt is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He works on the history of Sui and Tang Buddhism, particularly the Three Levels Movement, as well as the relationship between religious and political forms of authority. |
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Meghan HOWARD
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2018-2020 | Meghan Howard holds a B.A. in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies from Harvard University (2004). Her work as a Tibetan translator and interpreter led her to Songtsen Library in Dehradun, India, where she spent four years working on a translation project involving Dunhuang materials related to the history of Tibet’s imperial period (7th to 9th centuries). Her research interests center on cultural and religious exchanges between Tibet and neighboring peoples from the imperial period through the fourteenth century. She is currently writing a dissertation on Facheng 法成/Chödrup (Chos grub, d. c. 860), an influential Buddhist monk and translator of Buddhist scriptures from Chinese to Tibetan and vice versa. |
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Fedde de VRIES
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2018-2019 | Fedde de Vries holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands, (2012) and an M.A. in Asian Studies from University of California, Berkeley (2015). After obtaining his M.A. he spent a year at Dharma Realm Buddhist University, Ukiah, California, as resident translator. His primary research interest is the thought of the prolific Huayan author Chengguan. Fedde endeavors to put this research in the context of the history of Buddhist thought and, where possible, modern philosophy. |
University of Cambridge
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Ilay GOLAN |
Ph.D. Fellowship 2022 |
Ilay Golan is a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge University. During his studies for B.A. and M.A. degrees in Tel Aviv University he studied Mandarin and Classical Chinese, Chinese literature, and history of religions in China. His field of work is Chinese popular religion, folk religious practice, and the study of the Chinese and Buddhist Pantheons of deities. For his thesis, Ilay studied a group of maritime deities once popular along the coasts of southeastern China, called The Water Immortal Venerable Kings (Shuixian Zunwang 水仙尊王). He is currently working on a dissertation about Chinese maritime religion during the late-imperial period, tracing the origins of sailors’ beliefs in marine-protector deities such as Guanyin. |
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Mia MA
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2020-2021 | Mia Ye Ma received her B.A. in Art History from University of St-Andrews (2016) and M.A. degree in Art and Archaeology in East Asia from SOAS, University of London (2018). She also did internships at British Museum and National Museum of China. She is currently a PhD student in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern studies, University of Cambridge. In the faculty, she gives lectures of Buddhist Art for the undergraduate course “Chinese Art and Material Culture”. Her current research focuses on a corpus of Goryeo Water-moon Avalokiteśvara Paintings, which globally number around 45 pieces and had mistakenly been attributed to Chinese professional painters of the Mingzhou workshop. |
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Junfu WONG
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2019-2021 |
Junfu Wong is a Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge. He received his M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the Department of Religions and Philosophies, SOAS, University of London. His doctoral project seeks to explore the religious belief and ritual of lay people during the fifth and sixth centuries by analysing epigraphical texts inscribed on stone stelae. His research interests revolve around the connection between Buddhist textual and ritual traditions, and the cultural and religious exchanges between China and its neighbours along the Silk Road. He is also interested in the interplay between Buddhism and Taoism during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The funding allowed him to focus on his dissertation, which explores the religious ritual and belief of lay people during the fifth and sixth centuries. His research aims at reenacting the religious ritual of lay people as visualised by the verbal and graphic inscriptions carved on stone stelae. It will show that lay people acted as autonomous agents in fusing unrelated canonical and scriptural traditions into one single narrative that best fit their ideology of afterlife and ritual practices. With the kind support of the scholarship, he was able to travel to London in 2021 for research purposes. He discovered an unfinished stele at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is extremely rare and largely overlooked by previous scholars. From a codicological approach, as inspired by his supervisor, this stele, because of its unfinishedness, leaves many details in relation to the carving sequence of stelae. Such a discovery promptly triggered the formation of an essay which explores the production process of stone stelae. The essay was presented at a 2022 conference entitled Layered Image: Its Phenomena and Constructions in Ancient Art, organised by the Institute for Classical Archaeology, In 2021, he gave a lecture talk at the University of Oxford as an invited guest speaker and a paper presentation in the Cambridge-Hamburg Graduate Students Conference on Chinese Manuscript Culture at the École française d’Extrême-Orient (French School of the Far East). In 2022, he examined a Buddhist tombstone epigraphy which is associated with the Chan Master Fawan 法玩 of Jing’ai Monastery 敬愛寺 of Tang dynasty. He is learning Sanskrit, Japanese and German in the wish of enabling himself to engage with Buddhist scriptures in both Classical Chinese and Sanskrit, and to read secondary sources in Japanese and German. He is also a member of the sūtra translation group organised by Dr. Imre Galambos, responsible for translating chapter five of the Scripture of Repaying Kindness 大方便佛報恩經 |
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Ven. Phra Kiattisak PONAMPON
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2018-2021 | Ven. Phra Kiattisak Ponampon received his B.A. in Religious Studies from Hsuan Chuang University (Taiwan), a M.A. in Religious Studies from University of Otago (New Zealand), and another M.A. in Buddhist Studies from SOAS (UK), with a dissertation titled “Meditative Techniques and Visionary Experiences in Early Medieval Chinese Buddhist Texts.” His MPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (with distinction), completed in 2019 at the University of Cambridge, dealt with a textual and interdisciplinary study on Chinese Buddhist Dunhuang manuscripts that are concerned with the meditative techniques of guanfo, particularly qi contemplation (guan qi 觀臍) and related visionary experiences.
Phra Kiattisak Ponampon presented his Cambridge research at several different venues throughout 2020. In January, he presented his paper, “A Study of Dunhuang Manuscript Pelliot Chinois 2078” at the Paris-Cambridge-Hamburg 2020 Graduate Student Conference on Chinese Manuscript Culture at EFEO, Paris. Then in March, Phra conducted a live broadcast of his research on “Foshuo Guan Jing: a Buddhānusmṛti’s Manuscript for seeing the Buddha Within” for the 2020 DIRI Seminar Series, organized by the Dhammachai International Research Institute of New Zealand-Australia (DIRI). With great interest in Phra’s research on Foshou guan jing, his M.Phil. was selected and exhibited at Wat Phra Dhammakaya temple in Thailand, in April. Later in September, he was invited to talk in GBNUS Channel, one of the Buddhist Televisions in Thailand. His research was translated by Emeritus Professor Sukanya Sudbanthad, a member of Royal Society of Thailand (Department of Academy of Moral and Political Sciences) and published by DIRI. The book can be accessed at https://en.calameo.com/read/004808655723f17830ffa. |
University of Oxford
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Nelson Elliott LANDRY
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2018-2023 | Nelson completed his B.A. at McGill University in World Religions. He then moved to China for four years, where he did foundational language courses and an M.A. in Buddhist Studies at Peking University in Mandarin. He is presently in his third year of doctoral studies at the University of Oxford and is in final stages of writing up with funding from the Quebec government ((FRQSC) based in Montreal). His doctoral project looks at the figure of Daoxuan 道宣 and his role in Buddhist Chinese social history. At Oxford, Nelson was supervised by Stefano until his untimely death and Barend ter Haar (now at Hamburg University), who is now joined by John Kieschnick (Stanford University). Nelson’s external examiner will be Max Deeg (Cardiff University). Following his doctorate, Nelson plans to apply for postdocs to continue working on East Asian Buddhism. His thesis title is: “Miracles in Medieval Chinese Buddhism: An analysis of Daoxuan’s Ji shenzhou sanbao gantong lu 集神州三寶感通錄 (Collected Record of Miracles Relating to the Three Jewels in China)”. A brief abstract of his project follows:
Daoxuan (596-667CE), was an influential religious and political figure in early Tang dynasty (618– 907) Buddhism. He is best known for his exegetical work in the monastic codes (Skt. Vinaya; Ch. lü 律), composing seminal commentaries on Dharmaguptaka (Ch. Fazang bu 法藏部) Vinaya texts. Daoxuan did not however only work with the monastic codes. He was also a dedicated Buddhist apologist, a scrupulous cataloguer, and a prolific compiler of hagiographies as well as Buddhist miracle tales. The scholarly literature on Daoxuan often aims to explain his influence on the monastic codes and practice in China, often cutting across those recorded miraculous events in his life that might have influenced him. What can we say of his own experience of religious life in China, or of his own religiosity? Later in his life Daoxuan had many experiences of the miraculous and this doctoral thesis explores the influence such experiences had on Daoxuan. How did they inform Daoxuan’s views, especially regarding scriptures and canonicity? How did the medieval Chinese cultural context affect Daoxuan’s opinions and writing? This thesis answers these questions through close analysis of Daoxuan’s Ji shenzhou sanbao gantong lu 集神州三寶 感通錄 as well as other related texts. He has completed two full chapters. The first is the introduction to his completed thesis. The second is the penultimate chapter and covers Daoxuan’s relation to religious objects. |
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HUỲNH Quốc Tuấn (Ven. Thick Nhuan Tu)
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2019-2022, Glorisun-Zacchetti Fellowship recipient for 2021-2022 | Venerable Tuan is the first recipient of the Glorisun-Zacchetti Fellowhip, which honours the late Dr. Stefano Zachetti who was a well-respected scholar and part of the Glorisun network since its inception in 2017 until Dr. Zachetti’s untimely death in 2020.
Venerable Tuan is in his third year of his D.Phil. in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Before coming to Oxford for his doctorate program, he received a B.A. in Buddhist Studies (MCU, Thailand), Master of Buddhist Studies (HKU, Hong Kong), M.A. in Buddhist Studies (SOAS, London), and M.Phil. in Buddhist Studies (Oxford). Prior to coming to Oxford for his doctorate program, he received a B.A. in Buddhist Studies (MCU, Thailand), Master of Buddhist Studies (HKU, Hong Kong), M.A. in Buddhist Studies (SOAS, London), and M.Phil. in Buddhist Studies (Oxford). The working title of his thesis is “An Early Prajñāpāramitā Commentarial Tradition: A Study of the exegetical features of the Da zhidu lun (*Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa).” This study approaches the Da zhidu lun as a commentary on the Larger Prajñāpāramitā with a focus on its com-mentarial features and methods. It adopts both a macroscopic approach (which aims at sketching an overall picture of the interpretive program of the Da zhidu lun) and a microscopic approach (which aims at analysing in detail this program based on the three case studies). This study also intends to situate the Da zhidu lun in a larger picture of the Indian Mahāyāna exegetical tradition. |
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Jacob FISHER
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2021-2022 | Jacob completed the Masters Programme in Buddhist Studies of Sutra and Tantra, a seven-year fulltime traditionally orientated study programme based on the Tibetan Geshe degree, at Instituto Lama Tsongkhapa Italy. After completing the program, he spent another five years teaching it to the monks at Nalanda Monastery France, upon the request of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. At the conclusion of that period, he completed an M.St. in Oriental Studies (Tibetan) at the University of Oxford, graduating with a distinction and winning the Yeshe Khandro Prize for the best M.St. and M.Phil. thesis in Tibetan studies. Jacob is currently in his second year of a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies (Indo-Tibetan) at the University of Oxford.
In the first year of his D.Phil., he has been systematically looking through the Pāli canon (in translation), Sanskrit sources, plus sources in Tibetan, Chinese (in translation), and Japanese (in translation). Based on this research, he has produced a chart and detailed catalogue that shows how The Example (the primary subject of his dissertation) is used, what kind of philosophical systems it may be interpreted as belonging to, and relevant philological information. Based on the literature he has tracked down, he is now in the process of completing his Transfer of Status chapter. During this first year he has also attended the elementary Sanskrit course to improve his ability to consult original Sanskrit sources, served as a Sub Dean in Wadham college, and attended Buddhist studies conferences in Oxford and Prague. He also presented a paper at the Cambridge Graduate Student Conference on East Asian Studies in June and served as the convenor for the weekly Tibetan Graduate Studies Seminars here in Oxford. Jacob’s DPhil focusses on Indian and Tibetan Buddhist solutions to the central philosophical question of relativism and intersubjectivity. It specifically focuses on how Indian śāstra literature and their Tibetan commentaries resolve these questions through simultaneously bolstering the importance of conventional valid knowledge while at the same time undermining it through ascribing an illusory nature to all existence. A classic Buddhist example used by Indian, Chinese, and Tibetan epistemologists to illustrate the issues of relativism and intersubjectivity is the perception across world spheres of a river. Which depending on the realm one belongs to, will be perceived as either blood for hungry ghosts, water for humans, or nectar for the gods. This classic Buddhist example of at least three contradictory perceptions emphasises the paradox of relativism and elicits novel philosophical and epistemological solutions to this real-world problem. A study solely focussed on this pan-Buddhist example has yet to be undertaken and hopes to clarify the historical and conceptual development of the example, the different interpretations of it offered by major Indian and Chinese commentators, and by each of the four Tibetan Buddhist traditions. In particular, how Indian and Tibetan contemplatives utilised this example to teach important aspects of meditative training, and what constitutes valid knowledge of the Ultimate. |
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Qingniao LI
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Ph.D. Fellowship 2019-2022 |
The title of her research project is “Sattabuddhānāṃ Pūjārtham: The Worship of the Seven Buddhas and the Historical Transmission of the Pāli Mahāpadāna-sutta and its Textual Parallels in Sanskrit and Chinese”. The heart of this research will be a philological and comparative study between the Pāli Mahāvadāna-sutta, the Sanskrit Mahāvadāna-sūtra manuscripts from Central Asia, and the textual parallels of this MAP/MAV family preserved in the Chinese Āgamas. As her research deals with various recensions of the MAP/MAV, a close comparative philological study of all the available textual sources will help to uncover the historical transmission of this sutta/sūtra family. While comparing different textual parallel, she will undertake a thorough investigation of the MAV manuscripts and analyse their distinctive features. In addition, she also works on the English translations of MAP and MAV, and their textual parallel in the Chinese Dīrgha-āgama. Furthermore, this research will take into account the archaeological findings concerning the Seven Buddhas in India, Southeast and East Asian Buddhist areas. |
Princeton University
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Echo WENG
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M.A. Fellowship 2020-2022 | Echo joined the program in the Asian Religions subfield in 2020. Her research interests center on disability, body, medicine, and healing in medieval Chinese Buddhism. She is particularly interested in the disciplinary nature of Buddhist images and the interactions between images and practitioners in the realm of dream. She is also interested in the dialogue between religion and science fiction. Prior to coming to Princeton, Echo received her B.A. in Comparative Literature at Georgetown University and her M.A. in East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. |
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Shani GOLDFRAD
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M.A. Fellowship 2022 | Shani Goldfrad is an M.A. student in the India-Indonesia program of the Asian Studies department, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is interested in exploring the concepts of speech and sound in South Asian religions, particularly in a performative context. Her current research focuses on speech, body, and performance in early Buddhist thought. In her M.A. dissertation, she follows the expression of esoteric beliefs around speech and sound in classical South Indian music. In addition, Shani is a performing violinist, practicing various traditional musical styles. Through her music, she seeks to maintain active engagement with the ideas and theories that she pursues in her research. |
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TAN Yingxian |
Ph.D. Fellowship 2021-2022 | Tan Yingxian is currently a Ph.D. student in the department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). Her first M.A. thesis (HKU, 2016) focuses on the doctrinal differences between what is known as Chinese syncretic Chan and Japanese pure Zen. Her second M.A. thesis (HUJI, 2019) reappraises the economic rationale behind Northern Zhou’s persecution of Buddhism. Now she is working on the State-Saṃgha relation in late sixth and early seventh century China. Her Ph.D. dissertation deals with this subject from a double perspective: that of the state’s religious policy on the one hand and that of the Buddhist response on the other. Her participation in Frogbear/Glorisun programs in both 2019 and 2020 enabled her to broaden the perspective of her research, as did her role as the reporter on the Glorisun’s 2021 “From Jetavana to Jerusalem” conference. In mid-December of 2021 she held a photograph exhibition on Buddhism in modern China for the first time at HUJI, with special focus on monumental monasteries versus village hermitages. See her exhibition description on page 117. See her “ From Jetavana to Jerusalem” conference report in Appendix 2.2.4a and 2.2.4b. |
Yale University
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Vic GRANT |
M.A. Fellowship 2023-2025 | Vic Grant (they/them) is a second year Master’s student at Yale University, pursuing a degree in East Asian Studies. They gained their interest in East Asian Studies after spontaneously taking a Chinese language course during their undergraduate studies at Northern Arizona University. They received a BA in Comparative Cultural Studies with emphasis in East Asian Studies and Comparative Study of Religion, and a minor in Chinese. Their main research interest lies in Chinese Buddhism, particularly the transmission and use of dhāraṇī sutras during the Tang Dynasty. Their other interests include esoteric practices, translation of texts, and occult studies. |
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Yeonwoo JOH |
M.A. Fellowship 2023-2025 | Yeonwoo Joh is an M.A. student pursuing the Master of Arts in Religion degree in Asian religions at Yale Divinity School. Having graduated summa cum laude from Seoul National University with a B.A. in Aesthetics and Religious Studies, she is continuing her studies in East Asian Buddhism with an emphasis on modern Korean Buddhism. She has long been fascinated by the social dimensions of religion and hopes to better understand the role religion plays in modern society, particularly in the East Asian context. Her research interests include religion and modernity, Buddhist materiality, gender dynamics in Buddhist traditions, and religiosity in East Asia. She is currently writing her M.A. thesis on the categories of religion and culture in recent Korean Buddhist propagation efforts. |
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Kira JOHANSEN |
M.A. Fellowship 2024-2026 | Kira Johansen is from Fort Collins, Colorado, and is currently a MA student in East Asian Studies at Yale University, with a concentration on Chinese Buddhism. Following graduation from Florida State University in August of 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in International Affairs, Kira Johansen has since pursued Mandarin study at National Cheng Kung University 成功大學 in Taiwan, and worked on various projects concerning Buddhist diasporas in Thailand, in conjunction with the University of British Columbia’s From the Ground Up: Buddhism and East Asian Religions program. Kira is extremely enlivened by growing interdisciplinarity within the field of Buddhist Studies, and hopes to continue efforts into the digital humanities, with which she engaged during her undergraduate research and thesis on Buddhist nuns. In addition to researching these Buddhist nuns, in particular by examining The Biographies of Nuns 比丘尼傳 with a statistical lens, Kira is looking to combine these past interests with newer interests in the intersection of Chinese Buddhism and Southeast Asia. |
