Samuel Grimes

Samuel Grimes is Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies. His research centers primarily on Sanskritic Vajrayāna in South Asia and Newar Buddhism in Nepal. He received an MA from the University of Hawai’i, MPhil from Oxford University, and PhD from the University of Virginia. His dissertation examined responses to crises among Buddhists of the Nepal Valley (Kathmandu Valley), and it included ethnographic work in contemporary Newar Buddhism, as well as an examination of the state of Vajrayāna in the Valley in the 13th century and the centuries leading up to that period. He is also interested in kingship in Nepal, practical negotiations between Buddhist and Hindu ritualists, and the social worlds and dynamics exhibited in Sanskritic Vajrayāna texts.