KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2013

Christoph Anderl studied Sinology and Japanology at the University of Vienna (M.A. 1995), as well as East Asian linguistics at the University of Oslo (Ph.D. 2005). While finishing his Ph.D., he was a research fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (Uppsala, affiliated with Uppsala University). From 2006 to 2010, he joined the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at the University of Oslo, in the beginning as a research assistant and lecturer, and later as a senior research fellow and project leader. From 2010-2013, he joined the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr-University Bochum as a postdoctoral researcher working on the Mercator-funded project “Dynamics of Text Corpora and Image Programs: Representations of Buddhist Narratives along the Silk Road”. Moreover, he has worked at Ghent University as guest professor for East Asian linguistics from 2010.

Christoph Anderl specializes in Chinese Buddhism with an emphasis on Dūnhuáng manuscripts and medieval Chán Buddhism, but he is also interested in Buddhist iconography in Central Asia and China, and the relationship between text and image in East Asian Buddhism in general. Linguistically, he is interested in Early Vernacular Chinese, Buddhist Hybrid Chinese syntax and semantics, late medieval Chinese and Buddhist medieval lexicography and paleography. Among many publications, his latest include Digital Texts and Digital Resources (special monograph issue of the Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal vol. 25, 2012; edited together with Marcus Bingenheimer and Christian Wittern) and the edited volume Zen Buddhist Rhetoric in China, Korea and Japan (Conceptual History and Chinese Linguistics vol. 3, Leiden, Brill 2012). He is also the author of Studies in the Language of Zǔ-táng jí, a grammar of early vernacular Chinese (two volumes, 2004).

During his fellowship with us, he will investigate a project entitled ‘Buddhist Narratives in Central Asia and China’.

In addition, he will work on the final editing of the forthcoming monograph on the interplay of image and text in the spread of Buddhist narratives along the so-called Silk Road (together with Jessie Pons), and the editing of a book on intra- and inter-religious contacts of the early Chán School in the context of Northwestern medieval Chinese Buddhism ('Chán Buddhism - Dūnhuáng and Beyond: Texts, Manuscripts, and Contexts', with Christian Wittern, Kyoto Univ.).

Education

• Ph.D., East Asian Linguistics, Univeristy of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, 2005
• Magister Artrium, Sinology & Japanology, Unviersity of Vienna, Vienna Austria, 1995

KHK Fellowship

Duration: August 2013 - March 2014
Project: Buddhist Narratives in Central Asia and China (with a Database Project related to this topic).