Fri. 25. 11. 2022
09:15- 10:45 Hrs. (CET Germany)
5:15-6:45 pm (JST Japan)

Online
━ ZOOM Link
Meeting ID: 826 6024 3111
Passcode: pothi

Poster

Manuscriptology and Digital Humanities
Co-organized with Otani University Collection Buddhist Manuscript Research Project, Shin Buddhist Comprehensive Research Institute, Otani University, Kyoto

▍ Two Sets of Digital Tools for the Study of Chinese Buddhist Texts

Prof. Michael Radich (Professor of Buddhist Studies, HCTS, Heidelberg University)

Prof. Radich’s present research focuses most closely upon questions of attribution, and associated problems of dating, for texts in the Chinese Buddhist canon. In this work, he uses a suite of innovative software tools called "TACL", which he has developed with programmer colleague Jamie Norrish. He has also built and maintains a user-contributor online database called "CBC@", which enables scholars to keep track of arguments and evidence, in both primary and secondary literatures, pertaining to the attributions of Chinese Buddhist texts.

Michael Radich received his doctorate from the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University (2007), for a dissertation treating the history of Buddhist ideas about the various embodiments of buddhahood. His first monograph (Tokyo, 2011), treats the history of Buddhist stories about the sins and redemption of the famed patricide King Ajātaśatru, as that story changed across two thousand years of Buddhist history in India, China and Japan. His second monograph (Hamburg, 2015) treats the origins of Tathāgatagarbha thought in the (Mahāyāna) Mahāparinivāņa-mahāsūtra. He has held visiting positions at Kyōto University (2009) and the University of Hamburg (Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies, 2013-2014; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation fellow, 2015). From 2005-2017, he taught at Victoria University of Wellington in his native New Zealand, where he was latterly Associate Professor and Programme Director of Religious Studies. As of January 2018, he is Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" at the University of Heidelberg.