KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2014
Associate Professor, Department of Asian Studies and Department of Religious Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

Oliver Freiberger studied Indology, Religious Studies, and Tibetology at Georg-August University in Göttingen, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in Indology in 1999. In 2009 he received his habilitation degree in Religious Studies from Bayreuth University, where he had been a research associate (“Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter”) from 1995 to 1999 and assistant professor (“Wissenschaftlicher Assistent”) from 2000 to 2004. In 2004, he joined the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2010. He is a member of both the Department of Asian Studies and the Department of Religious Studies.

Oliver Freiberger’s research interests include the history of Buddhism in India, asceticism, and comparison in the study of religion. He is the author of two single-authored monographs (in German), Der Orden in der Lehre: Zur religiösen Deutung des Saṅgha im frühen Buddhis­mus. [The Order in the Doctrine: On the Religious Interpretation of the Saṅgha in Early Buddhism.] (2000) and Der Askesediskurs in der Religionsgeschichte: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung brahmanischer und frühchristlicher Texte [The Asceticism Discourse in the History of Religions: A Comparative Study of Brahmanical and Early Christian Texts.] (2009). He also edited the volume Asceticism and Its Critics: Historical Accounts and Comparative Perspectives (2006) and co-edited various other books. His most recent monograph, co-authored with Christoph Kleine, is Buddhismus: Handbuch und kritische Einführung [Buddhism: Handbook and Critical Introduction] (2011). During his fellowship with us, Oliver Freiberger will work on a project entitled Discourse Comparison: Revisiting the Comparative Method in the Study of Religion.

Education

• Dr. phil. habil (Habilitation), Religious Studies, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany, 2009
• Ph.D., Indology, History of Religions, Tibetology, Georg-August-University, Göttingen, Germany, 1999
• M.A., Indology, History of Religions, Tibetology, Georg-August-University, Göttingen, Germany 1994

KHK Fellowship

Duration: October 2014 to August 2015
Project: Discourse Comparison: Revisiting the Comparative Method in the Study of Religion 

External Websites

The University of Texas at Austin, Department Asian Studies

The University of Texas at Austin, Department Religious Studies