Alumni

Rae Erin Dachille

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 A. Hall

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...

Megan Howard

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.