KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2009 & 2011
Visiting Assistant Professor, Center of Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China

Since 2010 Georgios Halkias has held a research fellowship granted by the British Academy at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. In addition, he remains a Fellow at the Oxford Centre of Buddhist Studies and a Visiting Research Associate at the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. From April 2009 to December 2009 Halkias served as Research Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Koleg in Bochum where he examined the reciprocal exchanges between Hellenism and Buddhism in North-West India. He will further develop this venue of research by investigating the expansion of Buddhism in Central Asia for the duration of his second fellowship in 2011. From 2007 to 2009 he was employed as Research Assistant at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Studies at the University of London. In the winter term 2006/2007, he served as Adjunct Professor at Antioch University’s Buddhist Studies Abroad Program in Bodh Gaya, India.

He has extensive fieldwork experience in Asia, especially in North-West India, Nepal and Tibet and specializes on Tibetan Pure Land Buddhism and the history of the early dissemination of canonical Buddhist literature from Sanskrit to Tibetan. Other topics of research include: issues concerning the translation, canonization and dissemination of Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts from India, China and Central Asia, Buddhist-Muslim interactions in Himalayan borderland societies, Ladakhi Buddhist canons and Vajrayāna schools of thought and ritual technologies.

Education

• D.Phil., Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, 2006
• M.A., Film and Television Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1996
• M.A., Comparative Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1990
• B.A., Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1988

KHK Fellowships

Duration: April 2009 to December 2009
Project: The Hellenistic Buddhism of Asia: Religious Proselytism in Intellectual History

Duration:  April 2011 to June 2012
Project: The Expansion of Buddhism in Central Asia