Thomas Patton is a Ph.D. candidate of Buddhist Studies in the Asian Religions Program at Cornell University. His research interests concern lived religion in Myanmar, specifically local cults of sorcerer saints (weizzā), shrines, miracles, and other manifestations of religious devotion. Tom is currently writing a dissertation on weizzā saints and their devotees based on years…

My project examines the emerging popularity and phenomenon of international meditation centers in Thailand, focusing on encounters between international meditation center teachers and their international students. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews at these sites throughout Thailand, my project explores the social processes of religious change and adaptation, and the construction of religious meaning. I…

David Geary is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Oxford on a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. At the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology his research focuses on religion, diaspora and transnationalism, international development, and the politics of World Heritage in South Asia. This program…

Betty Nguyen’s dissertation, “Buddhist Calamity Cosmologies: Being Virtuous in an Immoral World,” focuses on late 19th to early 20th century cosmological sermons on morality from northern Thailand. The writings envision Buddhists as living in a cosmic historical era marked by wars, famine, pestilence, and oppressive rule. Events occurring in the social and natural worlds are…

Sujatha Arundathi Meegama completed her dissertation at the University of California Berkeley in May 2011.  Her current book project, tentatively titled as Constructing the Canon: Patrons and Artisans of Buddhist and Hindu Temples in Sri Lanka, questions the ethno-religious construction of the Sri Lankan art historical canon and argues for an alternative narrative, one in which…

Julia Cassaniti, Ph.D Stanford University Postdoctoral Scholar Department of Anthropology Current projects: I’m right now i­­­­nvolved in a few different projects that center on the ways that everyday psychological functioning is influenced by and made up through Buddhist thought in a small community in Northern Thailand. My dissertation, Control in a World of Change: Emotion and…