Penny Edwards is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, Walter and Elise Haas Professor of Asian Studies and Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies. A cultural historian of modern Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia and Chinese diaspora, her resesarch and teaching interests include literary, material and performance culture in Theravada Southeast Asia, the relationship between Buddhism, colonialism and nationalism, and global Buddhist networks.
She is the author of “Beyond Words: Going off Script in Theravada Southeast Asia” in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, (2022); “On Locations of Buddhism, Northern Thai Moral Orders and The Legend and Cult of Upagupta: Anne Blackburn, Charles Keyes, John Strong” in Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, (2021); Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860-1945, (2007), and “Making a Religion of the Nation, and its Language: the French Protectorate and the Dhammakay, 1885- 1945” in J. Marston and E. Guthrie, Ed. History, Buddhism and New Religious Movements in Cambodia (2004). She is guest editor of the special double issue “Buddhism in Cambodia” Journal of Khmer Studies: Siksacakr (2007-2008), and translator (from Khmer to English) of Chheat Sreang et al The Buddhist Institute: A Short History (2005).
In Spring 2025 she will teach the Graduate Seminar SSEASN C275, Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha: History and Modernity in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka (Friday, 11am – 2pm, Art History Seminar Room, East Asian Library).