University of British Columbia
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Zeng YANG
2022-2025 |
Zeng Yang specializes in East Asian Buddhism and Cultural Exchange. His current research interest lies in the interplay between the supernatural understandings of religious practice and realpolitik concerns of the state, to approach more balanced understandings of religious practices in Chinese history. His current book project is designed to enrich his doctoral studies of Esoteric Buddhism in 8th-century China: how Esoteric Buddhism was propagated to have invoked divine intervention and saved the Tang dynasty from a multifaceted crisis. His previous project was the biographical study of the Sillan great writer Choe Chiwon, with the translation of his anthology. |
University of California, Berkeley
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HOU Xiaoming 2022–2025 |
Hou Xiaoming is a scholar of Chinese Buddhism specializing in cross-cultural transmission and translation. She received her Ph.D. from EPHE/PSL (École Pratique des Hautes Études/ Université Paris Sciences et Lettres) in Paris, Department of Religions and Systems of Thought, in the area of History of Religion and Religious Anthropology, in 2022. Her doctoral thesis, entitled Pratiquer le bouddhisme en chinois: traduction et reconstruction des enseignements sur la méditation bouddhique du IIe au VIe siècles en Chine, focuses on the interdependent dynamics between meditation and exegesis in early medieval China. She received her M.A. in Asian Studies from EPHE in 2015, her B.A. in French Literature, and a secondary major in Chinese Literature from Fudan University in 2013. Thanks to the Glorisun Fellowship, she is able to devote herself fully to the writing of two book projects during her stay in Berkeley. The first focuses on reshaping his doctoral dissertation in French into an English book manuscript tentatively entitled Practicing Buddhism in Chinese: Meditative Exegesis and Exegesis for Meditation. The second is a French book manuscript originating from her M.A. dissertation. It explores the transformation in the representation of Buddhism in francophone Europe from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century by studying the French translations of the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters. In 2024 spring semester, she taught a course titled “Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts: Practicing Scriptures in Chinese Buddhism”. Readings in Chinese Buddhist Texts: Practicing Scriptures in Chinese Buddhism This course is designed as intensive training regarding how to read Chinese Buddhist texts, both from the perspective of methodological reflections and hands-on reading and translation practice. The seminars are generally organized around two main themes. The first is devoted to discussions of secondary studies that explore how historical actors engaged with Buddhist texts. It experiments with the boundary of Chinese Buddhist textuality, explores the many ways Buddhist texts were practiced, and its relationship with texts from other religious traditions. The second focuses on how we, as researchers, can engage with Chinese Buddhist texts. It is devoted to a comparative reading and translation of Chinese primary sources in a variety of genres connected through a common theme. For the spring semester of 2024, we will read texts that deal with Buddhist meditation in early medieval China. |
University of Hamburg
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Dr. Ven. Jizhao 2021 |
Ven. Jizhao received academic training at the Buddhist Academy of China (in Beijing) before going to New Delhi, India, where he obtained his M.A. degree from the Department of Buddhism Studies, New Delhi University, and a doctoral degree from the Department of Sanskrit and Indic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, with a dissertation titled “A Comparative Study of Daśabhūmi: With reference to Daśabhūmikā and Mahāvastu avadāna.” He had been invited by the University of Hamburg to conduct one-year postdoctoral research in 2020, which was postponed to the year of 2021 due to the pandemic. While he was in Hamburg, he continued his research on his dissertation topic and to publish his dissertation as a book. |
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Nelson LANDRY Postdoctoral Fellowship 2022–2026
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Nelson Landry hails from Montréal, Canada, where he completed his B.A. at McGill University in World Religions. He then moved to China, where he did foundational language courses and an M.A. in Buddhist Studies at Peking University in Mandarin. After completing his Master’s degree, he moved to England where he pursued a DPhil at the University of Oxford, completed in 2023. His doctoral project looked at the Tang dynasty monastic figure Daoxuan 道宣 (596–667) and his place in Buddhist Chinese social history. His interests lie in Chinese Buddhist historical narratology, material culture, as well as the role of miracles and revelations in the Buddhist imaginaire. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at University of Hamburg, teaching one course per semester. |
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Marta SANVIDO Postdoctoral Fellowship 2022–2024 |
Dr. Marta Sanvido earned her Ph.D. in East Asian Studies in 2019 from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), specializing in Japanese Buddhism and Religions, East Asian Religions, and Manuscript Studies. Prior to joining the University of Hamburg as a Postdoctoral Researcher, she served as the Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley (2021–2023), and as a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (2019–2020). In February 2024, she has interrupted her position as Glorisun Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Hamburg in order to make use of the research facilities at the renowned Komazawa University in Tokyo. There, she pursues her project on exploring how religious ideas and concepts were interpreted, adapted, and reimagined by marginalized individuals and peripheral communities. Her Glorisun Fellowship and funding has allowed her to participate in the AAR conference as well as perform archival research at the University of Hawai‘i, make the best of the 2023 Japan Foundation Research Fellowship, and successfully apply for the 2024 Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Early Career Research Fellowship in Buddhist Studies. Due to career opportunities elsewhere, Dr Sanvido has chosen to discontinue her fellowship at the University of Hamburg effective October 18, 2024. |
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Nadine BREGLER Postdoctoral Fellowship 2025–2026
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Nadine Bregler holds a B.A. in East Asian Studies from the University of Heidelberg and an M.A. in Sinology from the University of Hamburg, where she wrote a thesis on Dunhuang manuscripts preserving poems attributed to the Chinese Buddhist poet Wang Fanzhi 王梵志. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Sinology at the University of Hamburg, while affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) and the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts. Her dissertation, Collecting Literary Works: Medieval Chinese Multiple-Text Manuscripts (MTMs) from Dunhuang (9th and 10th Centuries), examines the compilation, preservation, and transmission of multi-text manuscripts from Dunhuang (present-day Gansu Province). Using codicological, paleographical, and philological methods, she analyses material features such as layout, script, and structural organization in relation to textual content. By placing these manuscripts in their historical and literary contexts, her study contributes to broader discussions on standardization, circulation, and the materiality of written artefacts in medieval China. |
Harvard University
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Chai Yee LEOW 2022 |
Chai Yee Leow is a postdoctoral fellow in Harvard CAMLab. She is a scholar who completed her M.A. in Buddhist Studies at Hong Kong University in 2003 and her Ph.D. in Religious Archaeology at Peking University in 2020. She is specializing in Buddhist Art, History, and Archaeology. Her Ph.D. dissertation is about Gandharan Buddhist narrative art, studying the repertoire composition and its association with Chinese Buddhist Literature. Her research focus is on the early Buddhist Art of India, China, and Central Asia, including the primary literary sources related to it. In general, she brings an interdisciplinary approach to studies in the history of Buddhism. |
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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Yael SHIRI
2022 |
Yael Shiri received her Ph.D. in Religions and Philosophies from SOAS, University of London, in 2020. She is the recipient of the 2021 Khyentse Foundation Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertations in Buddhist Studies. Since her graduation she was a postdoctoral fellow at the École française d’Extrême-Orient (Paris, France) and the School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University (Israel). Her research focuses on self-representation in Indian Buddhist literature and art, and in particular the narrative traditions of the Mūlasarvāstivādins. |
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Yang SHEN 2022 |
Yang Shen is a cultural anthropologist of religion and secularism. She received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Boston University in the U.S. in 2019. Before moving to Jerusalem as a Frieberg-Glorisun fellow for the academic year 2021–2022, Yang was a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. Yang will join the Sociology Department at Zhejiang University in China as a One-Hundred Talent Researcher and Assistant Professor in Anthropology by the end of 2022. |
Peking University
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Hanbing LI 2020–2022 |
After completing an undergraduate degree program in Chinese Language and Literature at Northwest University in Xi’an, China, Hanbing Li pursued graduate study in the major of Ancient Chinese Literature at Nanjing University (M.A. awarded in 2011), and her M.A. thesis discussed the philosophical thoughts of Qin Guan 秦觀 (1049–1100) on the basis of analyzing his poems and other related works. She obtained a Ph.D. degree with a dissertation titled “Song Taizong, Zhenzong liangchao yicheng Mibu jing yanjiu” 宋太宗、真宗兩朝譯成密 部經研究 [Research on the Tantric Texts Translated into Chinese during the Reigns of Emperor Taizong and Zhenzong in the Song Dynasty] at Tsinghua University in 2020. Her primary field of research is Buddhist history in medieval China, with a particular focus on the period of Tang and Song Dynasty. She is currently holding a postdoctoral fellowship in the School of Foreign Languages at Peking University (2021–2022). Her ongoing research interest centers around the trend of Buddhist transmission into China during the Northern Song Dynasty. |
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Xi LI 2020–2021 |
Li Xi was born in Taiyuan, Shanxi in 1987. She was admitted to the History Department of Peking University in 2006 and obtained a bachelor’s degree in History in 2010. In 2010, she was sent on recommendation to the History Department of Tsinghua University for a master’s degree in Chinese history. She studied under the guidance of Professor Zhang Guogang, majoring in Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties. In 2013, she was promoted on recommendation to the doctoral program in the History Department of Tsinghua University, under the guidance of Professor Zhang Guogang, and obtained her Ph.D. degree subsequently. Starting from May 2020, she has worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the South Asian Language Department of Peking University School of Foreign Languages, with Dr. Ru Zhan as her hosting professor. Her main research interests are social life history, women’s history and Buddhist history of Sui and Tang Dynasties. Her doctoral dissertation, Medieval Buddhism, Women and Confucian Family Ethics, was selected to be an excellent dissertation by Tsinghua University in 2020. |
University of Tokyo
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Yusuke ITO
2026-2029 |
Yusuke Ito (伊藤有佑) assumed the position of Project Assistant Professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo, in April 2026, with the financial support of the Glorisun Charitable Foundation. He earned both his Master’s degree in 2023 and his Ph.D. in 2026 from the University of Tokyo under the supervision of Professor Norihisa Baba (馬場紀寿). During his doctoral studies, Ito actively contributed to Glorisun-supported initiatives as a Project Researcher, partly managing conferences and coordinating international scholarly activities. His foundational work at the Institute included investigating the Pāli texts donated by the eminent scholar Professor Sodo Mori. Notably, in October 2023, he won the first-place Nakamura Hajime Eastern Philosophy and Culture Award, delivering a special lecture on ancient South Asian Buddhism at the award ceremony.
His research to date has focused primarily on Pāli literature, while also extensively exploring a wide range of textual sources, including Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, with a specific focus on the factors associating with awakening (bodhipakkhiyadhammā/bodhipakṣyadharmāḥ). In his doctoral dissertation, he adopted the chronological framework of “Middle South Asian Buddhism”—spanning roughly from the turn of the common era to the fifth century. Within this scope, he elucidated how traditions regarding the factors associating with awakening were transmitted, moving beyond conventional and rigid frameworks such as “Mainstream Buddhism” (Nikāya schools) and “Mahāyāna.” It is highly anticipated that he will further advance and deepen research within this framework of Middle South Asian Buddhism in the future. |
