KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2009, Associate Professor for South Asian Religions, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Following his fellowship at the Käte Hamburger Collegium in Bochum Jason Neelis was appointed Assistant Professor for South Asian Religions in the Department of Religion and Culture at Wilfrid Laurier University. He was previously an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida and an instructor for South Asian Religions and Languages at Florida State University, University of Washington and Antioch College’s Buddhist studies program in Bodh Gaya. Jason Neelis conducted extensive field work in Pakistan and has been awarded fellowships and grants from different institutions, including a DAAD visiting research grant at the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften in Germany.

Jason Neelis studies religious traditions of South Asia in historical, economic, and material contexts, with an emphasis on issues related to processes of cross-cultural mobility and exchange. During his fellowship in Bochum he finished the work on a book entitled Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks, which examines patterns in the institutional expansion of Buddhist communities based on literary texts and manuscripts, inscriptions and petroglyphs and archaeological sources.

Education

• Ph.D., Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA, 2001
• M.A., Asian Studies, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA, 1992
• B.A., Classics and South Asian Studies, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 1990

KHK Fellowship

Duration: April 2009 – March 2010
Project: Trade Networks and the Early Transmission of Buddhism throughout and beyond South Asia

External Website

Wilfrid Laurier University