Dear colleagues, students, and friends of Buddhist Studies,
As we move into spring and summer, we are pleased to greet everyone on behalf of the Ho Centre for Buddhist Studies. In light of the challenges we have all faced over the past two years of the pandemic, we hope all of you are safe and healthy, mentally and physically, and have perhaps found some strength in Buddhist practices to maintain your well-being.
We are pleased to announce some exciting news for the Centre. Dr. SeungJung Kim will be taking a year's leave starting May, as she embarks on a new path of parenthood! We are also thrilled to welcome Dr. Chris Fraser as Acting Director for the Centre for the following year! As the newly appointed Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of East Asian Studies, Dr. Fraser works on Chinese philosophy—including to some extent Chinese Buddhism—and was a Buddhist practitioner himself some time ago in Taiwan.
The second exciting news item involves a new postdoctoral fellow that will be jointly engaged by the HCBS and the DSR at U of T. Dr. Michael Ium, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and a native of Toronto, will be joining us from California. Please see his featured bio below.
Going forward in 2022, the HCBS will be continuing our Buddhism and posthumanism conversation series and our popular “The Circled Square” podcast about Buddhist Studies in Higher Education. We expect to be organizing an academic conference in the coming year and are exploring the possibility of hosting a series of lectures on Buddhist thought and contemporary social issues, in addition to sponsoring a number of exciting projects from the proposals that were submitted, and which we are now in the process of reviewing.
Professor SeungJung Kim
Director, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies
Associate Chair, Graduate Department of Art History
University of Toronto
Professor Chris Fraser
Acting Director, Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies
Richard Charles and Esther Yewpick Lee Chair in Chinese Thought and Culture
Department of Philosophy
Department of East Asian Studies
University of Toronto
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