Trent Walker is a Khyentse Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow based at the Department of Thai Language, Chulalongkorn University (October 2018–September 2020). His dissertation, Unfolding Buddhism: Communal Scripts, Localized Translations, and the Work of the Dying in Cambodian Chanted Leporellos(link is external), was completed under the supervision of Alexander von Rospatt in 2018. He is currently pursuing two projects emerging out of his PhD research. The first concerns Cambodian leporello manuscripts that transmit chanted poems and paratextual instructions for deathbed rituals in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The second focuses on the translation techniques and aesthetics found in Lao, Lanna, and Siamese bilingual Pali-vernacular palm-leaf manuscripts from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. While in Thailand, Trent will be working on collaborative projects with Peter Skilling and Santi Pakdeekham on Pali inscriptions, chronicles, and liturgies. Prior to coming to Berkeley, Trent received a BA from Stanford University in 2010, where his thesis engaged the textual and musical dimensions of contemporary Cambodian Dharma songs.
Emphasis: Thailand/Khmer/Pali
Dissertation: Unfolding Buddhism: Communal Scripts, Localized Translations, and the Work of the Dying in Cambodian Chanted Leporellos[electronic resource](link is external). 2018. 1651 p.