News

For more information, please check the student award page.

Applications are now being accepted for the UC Berkeley Postdoctoral Fellowship in Buddhist Studies. Apply here. 

BERKELEY — The Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley,  is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2025 Toshihide Numata Book Award in  Buddhism is Professor Collett Cox (Professor Emerita, University of Washington), for  her book A Gāndhārī Abhidharma Text: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragment 28 (Seattle:  Washington University Press, 2025).

Limantour Beach, September 6,  2025

XXth International Association of Buddhist Studies Conference
Leipzig University, Germany. August 10th – 15th, 2025

For a general summary of the scholarship and access to the application, click here.

BERKELEY— The Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announcethat the winner of the 2023 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is Professor John Kieschnick (Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Professor of Buddhist Studies, Stanford University), for his book Buddhist Historiography in China (Columbia University Press, 2022).

The Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is awarded on an annual basis to an outstanding book or books in the area of Buddhist studies. The selection is made by an external committee that is appointed annually. This year's winner is Professor Roy Tzohar (Tel Aviv University) for his book A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (Oxford University Press).

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2018 Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhism is Professor Roy Tzohar (Tel Aviv University) for his book: A Yogācāra Buddhist Theory of Metaphor (Oxford University Pr

2018 Lecture and Seminar Series

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 5 pm
Annual Lecture by Evan Thompson
Meditation and Nonconceptual Awareness Perspectives from Buddhist Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Toll Room, Alumni House, UC Berkeley

Jack Meng-Tat Chia is a Senior Tutor in the Department of History at the National University of Singapore and currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Born and raised in Singapore, he received his MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, and his PhD in History from Cornell University. He is currently working on his book manuscript, entitled Diaspora's Dharma: Buddhism and Modernity across the South China Sea.

In Tibet, various forms of divination persist both within and alongside the Buddhist and Bon religions. Excavated divination texts from Dunhuang and from other Silk Road sites furnish us with traces of the dynamic processes by which Buddhism absorbed various divination techniques practiced in 8th to 10th centuries.

Professor Jacqueline I. Stone was presented with the Toshihide Numata Book Award on the afternoon of Friday, December 1, 2017. The prize presentation included a keynote by the author and a symposium with talks by Professors James Benn (McMaster University), Gregory Schopen (UCLA), and Mark Blum (UC Berkeley).

During a ceremony at the Alumni House, the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (Numata Foundation) presented the 2016 Toshihide Numata Book Award to Professor Janet Gyatso (Harvard Divinity School) for Being Buddhist in a Human World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015)

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the winners of the 2015 Toshihide Numata Book Award are Lothar Ledderose and Sun Hua for their edited volume, Buddhist Stone Sutras in China, Sichuan Province, Volume 1 (Wiesbaden/Hangzhou: Harrassowitz Verlag/China Academy of Art Press, 2014).

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce two winners of the 2014 Toshihide Numata Book Award: Erik Braun, Professor of Reli

This conference was made possible by a grant from The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation and is dedicated to the exploration of the methodological underpinnings of the current encounter between Buddhism and cognitive science.

BERKELEY — The Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is pleased to announce that the 2013 Toshihide Numata Book Award has been awarded to Daniel Arnold, Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, for his book Brains, Bu