Centre for East Asian Studies

Profile

My field is the history of religion in China with a focus on Buddhism. My dissertation was a study of medieval collections of biographies of Buddhist monks which I approached as representations of the ideal monk, particularly with relation to ideas about asceticism, thaumaturgy and scholarship. I later revised the dissertation and published it as The Eminent Monk. My subsequent work focussed on the impact of Buddhism on Chinese material culture. The resulting book examined how Buddhism influenced Chinese material life over the course of nearly two thousand years of Buddhism in China. Under the headings "sacred power," "symbolism," "merit," and "accidents and incidentals," I explored the histories of a variety of objects, ranging from Buddhist relics and icons, to bridges, tea and the Chinese chair. I am currently at work on a book on Buddhist historiography in China that will survey the ways in which monks and nuns in China have interpreted the past.

Before coming to Bristol, I worked for eight years as a fellow at the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica in Taipei. I am currently managing editor of the Sinological journal Asia Major, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion