Doctoral Student in Asian Languages and Cultures & Anthropology
About
Current Research Interests:
I am a PhD researcher working on Tai-centered Buddhist worlds across southwest China and mainland Southeast Asia. My research brings together philological engagement with Buddhist manuscripts and ritual texts and anthropological approaches to lived religious practice. I am particularly interested in how religious life is shaped through the circulation of texts, the performance of ritual, and the negotiation of authority in multilingual and multi-ethnic contexts.
My work examines how Buddhist texts and writing practices move across Tai and neighboring linguistic worlds through translation, script use, and manuscript culture. In some circumstances, I approach Tai not simply as a vernacular tradition but as a regional medium through which Buddhist knowledge and ritual authority circulate. I also study Buddhist ritual practices—especially recitations and life-extension or healing rites—by reading ritual texts alongside ethnographic observation to explore how textual prescriptions are activated and reinterpreted in lived contexts.
Methodologically, I combine close reading of Buddhist manuscripts with ethnographic fieldwork, working with sources in Thai, Pāli, Khmer, Lao, and Chinese, and attending to regional scripts as media of Buddhist transmission. This interdisciplinary orientation is formalized through a Student-Initiated Doctoral Program jointly based in Asian Languages and Cultures and Anthropology.
Languages:
Thai, Khmer, Pāli, Lao, Sanskrit, Chinese (Mandarin, Wu, and Classical Chinese), and Japanese.
