Close-ups

What do you teach at Ca’ Foscari? What are your main research interests? 
I focus on Buddhism and the religious and cultural history of China, especially the late imperial and modern period. My main research interests concern the relation between Buddhism and modernity, urban religion, environmental history and technology. I have a PhD from SOAS (University of London), where I also taught for about seven years. Before coming to Ca' Foscari I was also a Leverhulme Fellow in Chinese History and Assistant Professor in Buddhist Studies at the University of Manchester. More recently I held the chair of Chinese Religions and Buddhist Studies at the New York University in Shanghai where I am still Visiting Professor in Buddhist Cultures.

What led you to pursue a research career? What are you most passionate about in your field of study? 
The researcher job is extraordinary and exciting, first and foremost for its methodological severity and ethical tension. Buddhist studies represent a fundamental field of knowledge for understanding Asia, its past as well as its present.
Buddhism is a universal religion with great soteriological depth supported by a brilliant philosophical, technical and scientific backbone. Its sophisticated conception of language and epistemology is a source of continuous wonder and admiration for me. 

What does teaching at the university mean to you? 
My teaching practices want to inspire students to develop their own research interests by accessing primary sources or using archival materials or collecting ethnographic data. My goal is enabling them to learn a wide range of skills that can eventually be implemented in any workplace. I encourage critical and analytical thinking. My courses are imbued with an increasing focus on digital humanities techniques, especially spatial ethnographies, oral histories and transmedia storytelling.

You work in a department dealing with non-European worlds: what does working on cultural diversity mean to you in an increasingly interconnected world? 
It primarily means expressing a deep interest in all forms of cultural diversity and remaining sharply sensitive to differences. Globalisation is nothing new: as Buddhism spread from India to other parts of Eurasia during the first millennium, its texts and practices were important vehicles for the cross-cultural dissemination of ideas. Our students learn that Buddhist scriptures and stories are written in the major languages of Asia, both ancient and modern. They also learn that Buddhist practices, cosmologies and institutions go beyond the constraints of various local and national identities. The Mahāyāna Buddhist texts also assert that the realm of the divine and the realm of the world permeate each other. This non-dualist, non-essentialist thinking has permeated non-European daily practices for centuries. For these and many other reasons, students of Buddhism and non-European cultures need to acquire a strong predisposition towards internationalism as well as a multilingual and multicultural background.