Giulio Agostini took his first degree (Laurea) in Classics in Milan, where he also started studying Sanskrit and Pali. He came to Berkeley to specialize in Indian Buddhism; in addition to his work on Sanskrit and Pali materials he acquired facility in Classical Chinese and Tibetan. He completed his dissertation, entitled "Precepts and Upasaka Status: Indian Views of the Buddhist Laity," in May, 2002. He now continues to pursue his research and publishing in the areas Vinaya and Hinayana literature in general, and lay Buddhism in ancient India in particular, while teaching Latin and...
Juhn Ahn received both his B.A. (Asian Studies and Studies in Religion) and M.A. (Buddhist Studies) from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor under the supervision of Prof. Robert Sharf. He completed his dissetation on the topic of "Zen illness" with a special emphasis on the works of Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163), Chin'gak Hyesim (1178-1234), Wuyi Yuanlai (1575-1639), and Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769). Juhn Ahn does research in Japanese, Chinese and Korean Buddhist literature. He holds a joint appointment with the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of East Asian Studies...
Kris Anderson received her B.A. in Asian and Middle East Studies from Northwestern University (2008). She completed research on contemporary Tibetan art in Lhasa, and studied at Tibet University in 2008-2009. Her current research interests focus on theories of translation and strategies employed translating Sanskrit texts into Tibetan during the earlier and later disseminations, and into Chinese.
Prapod Assavavirulhakarn is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, where he is also the Thai Director of the Confucius Institute. He is a member of the Governing Board of Nalanda International University. He is a contributor to Past Lives of the Buddha: Wat Si Chum and the Art of Sukhothai (ed. P. Skilling, Bangkok: River Books, 2008) and author of The Ascendancy of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 2011).
Emphasis: Sanskrit/Pali
Dissertation: The Ascendency of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia....
Professor Carl Bielefeldt, specializes in East Asian Buddhism, with particular emphasis on the intellectual history of the Zen traditon. He is the author of Dôgen's Manuals of Zen Meditation and other works on early Japanese Zen, and serves as editor of the Soto Zen Text Project. Co-director of the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies and the Asian Religion and Cultures Initiative.
Emphasis: Japanese
Dissertation: The "Fukan Zazen-Gi" and the Meditation Teachings of The Japanese Zen Master Dogen. [...
Mark Blum, Professor and Shinjo Ito Distinguished Chair in Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, received his M.A. in Japanese Literature from UCLA and his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies in 1990 from the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in Pure Land Buddhism throughout East Asia, with a focus on the Japanese medieval period. He also works in the area of Japanese Buddhist reponses to modernism, Buddhist conceptions of death in China and Japan, historical consciousness in Buddhist thought, and the impact of the Nirvana Sutra (Mahāparinirvāṇa-sūtra) in...
Dissertation: Xinxing’s Demon: The Three Levels Movement and a Crisis of Scriptural Authority in Sui-Tang Chinese Buddhism, University of California at Berkeley, , 2023,
Robert Buswell earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985. Before returning to academe, he spent seven years as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Korea, which served as the basis of his book The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea(link...
Eun-su Cho is a professor of Buddhist Philosophy at Seoul National University in Korea, and currently the director of the Institute of Philosophical Research. She received her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of California and was an assistant professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include Indian Abhidharma Buddhism, Korean Buddhist thought, and women in Buddhism. She has written numerous articles and book chapters, including "Wŏnch'ŭk's Place in the East Asian Buddhist Tradition," "From Buddha's...
Dissertation: The Rise of Mahāyāna Buddhism: A Study of Its Self-Identity and Institutionalization through Reconstructing the Biographical Process of the Buddha[electronic resource](link is external). 1995. 207 p
Rae Erin Dachille received her B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College (1999) and an M.A. in Asian Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005). In 2008, she completed a Masters thesis on modes of representation in Tibetan medical paintings and earned an M.A. in the Languages and Cultures of Asia at UW-Madison. Her research interests include visual and literary representations of the body in Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist and medical traditions.
Emphasis: Tibetan
Dissertation: The Body Mandala Debate: Knowing the Body through a Network...
Catherine Dalton received a B.A. in Religion from Middlebury College (2001) and an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from Kathmandu University (2008). Her doctoral research at Berkeley focused on the development and standardization of meditation manuals in early modern Tibet. She is Assistant Professor at Kathmandu University’s Centre for Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute
Emphasis: Tibetan
Dissertation: Enacting Perfection: Buddhajñānapāda’s Vision of a Tantric Buddhist World. 2019
Ronald Davidson earned his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies in 1985, specializing in Indian Yogacara philosophical problems. He is Professor of Religious Studies. His primary area of research is in the domain of tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana, Mantrayana, Mantranaya), especially in medieval India and early Tibet. His books include Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005); Ronald M. Davidson...
Fedde de Vries holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands, (2012) and an M.A. in Asian Studies from UC 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.
Nir Feinberg received a B.A. in Philosophy and East Asian Studies from Tel Aviv University, and an M.A. in South Asian Studies from Tel Aviv University. He is primarily interested in Indian Buddhist philosophy and Sanskrit literature, particularly in the understanding of emotions, as presented in Buddhist scholastic, poetic, and disciplinary texts.
Amanda Goodman received a B.A. in Chinese and Comparative Literature from Indiana University, an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan, and her Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley (2013). Herdissertation focused on Tang-Song Chinese Esoteric Buddhism and centers on a number of recovered Dunhuang manuscripts, specifically a number of lineage texts that appear to relate the early Chan school with the Chinese Esoteric tradition.
Emphasis: Chinese
Dissertation: The Ritual Instructions for Altar Methods (Tanfa yize): Prolegomenon to...
Eric Greene is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale. He completed his Ph.D. in 2012, under the supervision of Robert Sharf. He specializes in the history of medieval Chinese Buddhism. Much of his recent research has focused on Buddhist meditation practices, including the history of the transmission on Indian meditation practices to China, the development of distinctly Chinese forms of Buddhist meditation, and Buddhist rituals of confession and atonement. He is currently writing a book on the uses of meditative visionary experience as evidence of sanctity within early...
Janet Gyatso is a specialist in Buddhist studies with concentration on Tibetan and South Asian religious culture. She studied primarily with Professors Jaini and Lancaster during her years at Berkeley, where she received her Ph.D. In 1981. She is currently Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University, in the Divinity School. She taught at Amherst College, the University of Michigan, and Wesleyan University before going to the Divinity School, Harvard University. Her books include ...
David Hall earned his Ph.D. from the University of California Berkeley in 1990 specializing in East Asian Esoteric Buddhism and military history. Trained as a Navy Hospital Corpsman in the late 1960s, David Hall was attached to Third Marine Division during the Vietnam War Era. Ordained as a Tendai Buddhist priest (1978), he integrated his religious training in Japan with graduate research at U.C. Berkeley. He has published...
Meghan Howard received a B.A. in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies from Harvard University (2004). She then spent four years at Songtsen Library in Dehradun, India, working on a translation project involving Dunhuang materials related to the history of Tibet's imperial period (6th 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.
Robert Kritzer is Professor at Kyoto Notre Dame University. He specializes in abhidharma and early Yogācāra, and is the author of two books, Rebirth and Causation in the Yogācāra Abhidharma (Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde 44. Wien: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 1999) and Vasubandhu and the Yogācārabhūmi: Yogācāra Elements in the Abhidharmako śabhāṣya (Studia Philologica Buddhica Monograph Series 12. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2005). He has...
Dr. Jinwol Y. H. Lee is a Buddhist Monk and Zen Master. He belongs to Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, the major traditional Mahayana Buddhism in Korea, and serves as the President's Special Adivisor for International Affairs. He has been the President of URI Korea Multiple Cooperation Circle and a trustee of the URI Global Council, elected in the Asian Region since 2002. Formerly a professor of Buddhist Studies at the Seoul Graduate School of Buddhism and the Dean of Religious Affairs of Dongguk University in Seoul, Jinwol is now a professor teaching Buddhist meditation and culture...
Nancy Lin (M.A., Columbia University; Ph.D., UC Berkeley) specializes in Buddhist traditions of Tibet and the Himalaya. Her research focuses on courtly Buddhist culture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially the production of poetry, visual objects, and personae. Her current questions largely cluster around the dynamics of worldliness and renunciation, aesthetics and ethos, and wisdom and eloquence. Other interests include rebirth lineages and narratives, Tibetan engagement with Indic Buddhist and literary traditions, and cross-cultural interactions with Inner Asia...
Weiyu received a B.A. in Spanish and French Literature from Trinity University in 2016 and an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2021. During these degree programs, Weiyu also spent 2.5 years at various institutions in Spain and France, and more recently, a summer researching and cataloging manuscripts at the National Library of France. In his M.A., he honed his focus on Chinese Buddhist medieval exegesis, particularly Fazang’s commentary on the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Upon moving to Berkeley,...
