Projects
Chinese Philosophy and its Religious Minorities: ethnicity, religion, and national identity in modern Chinese thought and the discipline of "ethnic minority philosophies" Ghent University
This project seeks to rethink the history of modern Chinese thought by providing the first ever study of the academic discipline of “ethnic minority philosophies” in the People’s Republic of China. It will focus on the much neglected relation between the imported categories of “philosophy” and “religion” and conceptions of ethnicity in twentieth-century and contemporary Chinese thought. The field of ethnic minority philosophies emerged in the ...
Entangled in Words: Lamp Records and the Development of Chan Buddhist Hagiographic Literature in Tang-Song Transition (ca. 750–1050) China Ghent University
This project aims to investigate the development of Chan Buddhist hagiographic literature from mid-Tang (ca. 750) to early Northern Song (960–1127) China, concentrating on the emergence of the so-called “lamp records” (denglu 燈錄) which were formative in establishing Chan/Zen Buddhism as an integrated tradition. The study examines lamp records as a literary genre through the two earliest extant witnesses: the locally produced Zutang ji 祖堂集 ...
The Awakening of the Hinterland: The Regional Establishment of Mainstream Buddhist Traditions in Mid-Tang China (755–845) Ghent University
My research project concerns the formation of monastic networks in provincial China during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), focusing primarily on the Buddhist traditions of Chan (better known in the West by the equivalent Japanese term “Zen”), Vinaya (monastic code), and Esotericism, which have yet to be explored as a series of related regional movements. I investigate the dissemination of these traditions in the context of the unprecedented ...
The foundations of the Tiantai Tiantai Buddhism in the mountains: Identification Techniques in the creation and re-establishment of a Buddhist order Chinese on a ridge. Ghent University
The Buddhist Tiantai school was different from all other schools of Chinese Buddhism, as it remained confined
to the Tiantai Mountains, while other schools spread over all of China. I will demonstrate that the Tiantai
school's dedication to this area resulted from the devotion to the school founder, Zhiyi, who chose the Tiantai
Mountains as the site for his school.
An intellectual genealogy of Islam in modern China: categorization, modernization, secularization Ghent University
This project will investigate how modern Chinese Islamic thinkers accommodated the novel category of “religion” and renegotiated the position of Islam in twentieth-century and contemporary China by studying the complex relations between the transition from empire to nation-state, the emergence of the discipline of religious studies, and the repositioning of spirituality over and against secular politics.
Legitimizing Buddhism through the Body: On Robe, Posture, and Tonsure in Early Medieval China’s Buddhist Communities. Ghent University
This dissertation strives to fill the research gaps concerning three bodily-related controversies (baring the right shoulder, sitting with legs out front while eating, and shaving the hair) discussed inside Buddhist apologetic literature as soon as Indian customs began spreading to China. Starting from the question of why specifically these three practices were so harshly contested by the Chinese secular society, the present research project ...
Self-actualization and self-transcendence in China: the paradoxical role of fate as an agent for spiritual and psychological wellbeing. Ghent University
This research proposes to investigate the characteristically Chinese concept of fate (ming) in terms of spiritual-psychological agency Fate has always played a pervasive role in ancient Chinese thought and folk religion However, fate as we know it in the West as an uncontrollable force does not have the same meaning in China Chinese conceptions of fate display different dimensions, most commonly expressed in the concepts ‘eavenly ...
Chinese Buddhism and society in the first 40 years of the 20th century Ghent University
In the early twentieth century of China, Buddhism was integrated in economic, political and cultural developments. On the basis of Chinese Buddhist magazines, a research into the function of Buddhism in China’s society and national renaissance can answer the basic question of how the social position of Buddhism developed in the first forty years of the twentieth century.
Institutional organisation of Buddhist nunneries in China: between past and present Ghent University
The research project studies the institutional organisation of Buddhist nunneries in a Chinese and in an international context. The focus lies on the attitude of nunneries towards tradition and present-day reality, as well as on their international role based on this attitude. The project aims at providing a scientifically well based research of the institutional position of nunneries within Buddhism.