Notes on Contributors
Dalton, Jacob P.
is Khyentse Foundation Distinguished Professor in Tibetan Buddhism and Professor at the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include Nyingma religious history, tantric ritual, and the Dunhuang manuscripts. Among his recent publications are: Jacob P. Dalton, “Signification and History in Zhang Nyi ma ’bum’s rDzogs pa chen po tshig don bcu gcig pa,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 43 (2018): 256–273 and; “Power and Compassion: Negotiating Religion and State in Tenth-Century Tibet,” in The Illuminating Mirror, Tibetan Studies in Honour of Per K. Sørensen, ed. Olaf Czaja and Guntram Hazod, 101–118 (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2015).
Forte, Erika
is Professor at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University and the Principal Investigator of the FWF stand-alone project “Contextualizing Ancient Remains: Networks of Buddhist Monasteries in Central Asia” at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Science. Her research interests include issues of cultural flow and dynamics of Buddhist visual communication across Central Asia, with focus on the cultural history of Khotan oasis during the 1st millennium CE. Her recent publications include: Erika Forte, “Images of Patronage in Khotan,” in Buddhism in Central Asia I: Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage, ed. Carmen Meinert and Henrik H. Sørensen, 40–60 (Leiden: Brill, 2020) and; Erika Forte, ed., “Ancient Central Asian Networks: Rethinking the Interplay of Religions, Art and Politics across the Tarim Basin (5th–10th C.),” BuddhistRoad Papers, vol. 6.2. Special Issue (2019).
Hou, Haoran
holds the prestigious, two-year postdoctoral fellowship ‘Shuimu Scholar’ (Chin. Shuimu xuezhe
Kasai, Yukiyo
is one of the researchers of the BuddhistRoad project. She specialised in the field of the Old Uyghur philology and Central Asian religious history focused on Uyghur Buddhism in the period between 7th and 14th century. She demonstrates her vast knowledge on Uyghur manuscripts and their multilinguality and -scriptuality in her publications, her most recent ones being an edition of a number of Old Uyghur Āgama fragments preserved in the Sven Hedin collection, together with Simone-Christiane Raschmann, Håkan Wahlquist and Peter Zieme, ed., The Old Uyghur Āgama Fragments Preserved in the Sven Hedin Collection (Stockholm, Turnhout 2017), that of Old Uyghur fragments which are partly written in Brāhmī script, in cooperation with Hirotoshi Ogihara, Die altuigurischen Fragmente mit Brāhmī-Elemente (Berliner Turfantexte XXXVIII, Turnhout, 2017). In the framework of the project, she deals with the further relevant topics, including the relationship between the politics and religions, and also takes the visual materials as the additional sources for her research. The results of this new research are presented, for example, in Yukiyo Kasai, “Uyghur Legitimation and the Role of Buddhism,” in Buddhism in Central Asia I: Partonage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage, ed. Carmen Meinert and Henrik H. Sørensen, 61–90 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020) or “Talismans Used by the Uyghur Buddhists and Their Relationship with the Chinese Tradition,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 44 (2022).
Keyworth, George A.
is Associate Professor of Premodern Chinese and Japanese History and Buddhist Studies in the History Department at the University of Saskatchewan. Between 2006–2009 he worked as Independent Researcher at the Institute for Research in Humanities at the Kyoto University and was Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder (2001–2006). He specialises in East Asian manuscript Buddhist texts from Dunhuang and old Japanese manuscript canons, Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhism, Buddhism and Daoism in medieval China and Esoteric Buddhism in China, Japan, and Tibet. Among his recent publications are: George A. Keyworth, “How the Mount Wutai Cult Stimulated the Development of Chinese Chan in Southern China at Qingliang Monasteries,” Studies in Chinese Religions 5.3–4 (2019): 353–376 and; “On Xuanzang and Manuscripts of the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra at Dunhuang and in Early Japanese Buddhism,” Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 3 (2020): 256–314.
Konczak-Nagel, Ines
is a graduate in Indian Art History at the Free University of Berlin. She worked for two years as Assistant Curator at the Museum of Indian Art, Berlin. She completed her PhD at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich on the subject of Buddhist wall paintings of Xinjiang (2012). From August 2012 to October 2015, she was a research fellow of the project “Connecting Art Histories in the Museum” at the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut. Meanwhile, she received a fellowship at the Ryukoku University, Kyoto, and a one year position as a faculty member at Leipzig University. She works as Research Associate in the project “Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. Among her recent publications are: Ines Konczak-Nagel and Lilla Russell-Smith, ed., The Ruins of Kocho: Traces of Wooden Architecture on the Ancient Silk Road. Published on the Occasion of the Exhibition in the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz (7th September 2016–8th January 2017) (Berlin: Laserline Druckzentrum, 2017) and; Ines Konczak-Nagel, “Representations of Architecture and Architectural Elements,” in Essays and Studies in the Art of Kucha, ed. E. Franco and Monika Zin, 11–106 (New Delhi: Dev, 2020).
Lo Muzio, Ciro
is Associate Professor of Indian and Central Asian Archaeology and Art History in the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies at the Sapienza University of Rome. He has been a member of the Uzbek-Italian archaeological mission to Uzbekistan, taking part to the field research (surveys, diggings in the Bukhara Oasis) and to the study of the material, in particular terracottas and wall paintings (1995–2010). Since 2015 he is head of the first and second level programmes in Oriental Languages and Civilisations, at the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome. Among his recent publications are: Ciro Lo Muzio, “Persian ‘Snap’: Iranian Dancers in Gandhāra,” in The Music Road. Coherence and Diversity in Music from the Mediterranean to India. Proceedings of the British Academy, ed. Reinhard Strohm, 71–86 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) and; Ciro Lo Muzio, “On the Relationship between Gandhāran Toilet-trays and the Early Buddhist Art of Northern India,” in Problems of Chronology in Gandhāran Art. Proceedings of the First International Workshop of the Gandhāra Connections Project, University of Oxford, 23rd–24th March, 2017, ed. Wannaporn Rienjang and Peter Stewart, 123–134 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
Meinert, Carmen
is Professor for Central Asian Religions and PI of the ERC project BuddhistRoad at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Trained in Buddhist Studies, Tibetan Studies, and Sinology, she aims to develop the field of Central Asian religions more systematically and to integrate Central Asian and Tibetan Studies in the larger framework of Comparative Religious Studies. Her recent publications include: Carmen Meinert and Henrik H. Sørensen, ed., Buddhism in Central Asia I—Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 2020); Ann Heirman, Carmen Meinert, and Christoph Anderl, ed., Buddhist Encounters and Identities across East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2018) and; Carmen Meinert, ed., Transfer of Buddhism across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th Centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
Russell-Smith, Lilla
is an Art Historian and Sinologist. She is Curator of Central Asian art at the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and specialises in the regional arts of the Silk Road, especially of the Turfan area, Dunhuang and Kuča. Her recent publications include: Lilla Russell-Smith and Ines Konczak-Nagel, eds., The Ruins of Kocho: Traces of Wooden Architecture on the Ancient Silk Road (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 2016) and; Lilla Russell-Smith, “Conversion and Magic: New Observations about Buddhist paintings from Kucha and Dunhuang,” Indo-Asiatische Zeitschrift 23 (2019): 16–34.
Sinclair, Iain
is a Lecturer at Nan Tien Institute, Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Queensland School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. He studies the Hindu-Buddhist civilisations of South Asia, the Himalayas and the Malay Archipelago using primary sources. His doctoral dissertation (Monash University, 2016) examined the transition from celibate to tantric monasticism in the medieval Kathmandu Valley. In 2018 and 2019 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, ISEAS—Yusof Ishak Institute, and in 2019 and 2020 he was a Käte Hamburger Kolleg Fellow at the Centre for Religious Studies, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. His recent publications include: Iain Sinclair, Dharmakīrti of Kedah: His Life, Work and Troubled Times (Singapore: Temasek History Research Centre, 2021) and; Iain Sinclair, “Traces of the Cholas in Old Singapura,” in Sojourners to Settlers—Tamils in Southeast Asia and Singapore, ed. Nalina Gopal and Arun Mahizhnan (Singapore: Indian Heritage Centre and Institute for Policy Studies, 2019).
Sørensen, Henrik H.
Researcher and Project Coordinator in the ERC project BuddhistRoad at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, has been the Co-Director of the Seminar for Buddhist Studies in Copenhagen together with Ian Astely (Japan) and Per K. Sørensen (Tibet) from 1987–1999 and has become its Director in 2000. His fields of interest cover East Asian Buddhism broadly defined with special emphasis on the relationship between religious practice and material culture including religious art. The Buddhist sculptural art of Sichuan has been at the forefront of his endeavours since the mid-1980s and he conducted numerous fieldworks and investigations in East Asia. In the past two decades, the various forms of Esoteric Buddhism have taken precedence over other form of East Asian Buddhism, although Chinese Chan and Korean Sŏn Buddhism continue to be fields of major interest. Henrik was a research fellow of Käte Hamburger Kolleg at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (2011–2012). He is currently working on a series of articles on Buddhist practices in Dunhuang during the late medieval period. Among his recent publications are: Henrik H. Sørensen, “Worlds beyond Sukhavati. The Divine Scripture on the Rebirth in the Pure Land of the Highest Cavern Mystery of Numinous Treasure,” in Pure Lands in Asian Texts and Contexts: An Anthology, ed. Georgios Halkias and Richard K. Payne, 663–704 (Honululu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019) and; Henrik H. Sørensen, An Early Collection of Buddhist Ritual Texts from Dunhuang, 4494: Spells in Context (Shanghai: Normal University, 2017).
Wang, Michelle C.
is Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Georgetown University. She received her PhD from the Department of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University in 2008 and worked as Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University (2008–2010). She co-directed the Luce Foundation-funded Georgetown-IPD Project for North American Silk Road Collections (2015–2016) and co-organised the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar titled “Critical Silk Road Studies” (2014–2015). Her research focuses on Buddhist visual and material culture in China, particularly in the Tang Dynasty. Among her recent publications are: Michelle C. Wang, Xin Wen, and Susan Whitfield, “Buddhism and Silk: Reassessing a Painted Banner from Medieval Central Asia in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 55 (2020): 8–25 and; Michelle C. Wang, Maṇḍalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018).
Wilkens, Jens
is a Turkologist based at the Academy of Sciences and Humanities at Göttingen, Germany. He works for the project Dictionary of Old Uyghur and is responsible for the recording of ‘foreign elements’ in the vocabulary of Old Uyghur. The first fascicle with ‘foreign elements’ is in the press. His recent publications include: Jens Wilkens, Handwörterbuch des Altuigurischen: Altuigurisch—Deutsch—Türkisch (Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2021), and Jens Wilkens, “Sacred Space in Uyghur Buddhism,” in Buddhism in Central Asia I: Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage, ed. Carmen Meinert and Henrik H. Sørensen, 189–203 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020).