Categorie: News

7 April | Guest Lecture by Prof. Whitney Cox (University of Chicago)

It is our pleasure to invite you to the following public lecture:

 

Materializing Bilhaṇa

 

by Prof. Dr. Whitney Cox, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

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Location:

On campus: Blandijn, Faculteitsraadzaal

Online: Teams, register for the link

 

Date and time: April 7th, 2026, 17:00 CET.

 

Biography of the speaker:

Whitney Cox’s main interests are in the literary and intellectual history of southern India in the early second millennium CE.  Within that broad range, his research has concentrated on Sanskrit kāvya and poetic theory, the history of the Śaiva religion, and medieval Tamil literature and epigraphy, especially that of the Coḻa dynastic state.  Cox is also interested in the practice of literary translation and critical edition.

After starting the study of Sanskrit as an undergraduate, and living in Madurai, Tamilnadu, Cox began graduate studies in SALC, culminating in the award of a PhD in 2006. He has lived and worked extensively in Tamilnadu, Karnataka, and Pondicherry.  Prior to joining the SALC faculty, Cox taught at the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.  He has held awards from Fulbright-Hays, the British Academy, and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and has been a fellow in the Franke Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

In 2019-2020, Cox will serve as the Principal Investigator of a project supported by the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, entitled “Śāstram: Form, Power, and Translation in Indic Scholasticism” and as a Co-Investigator for another project at the Collegium, “The CEDAR Project: Criticial Editions for Digital Analysis and Research.”  He serves on the editorial board of the Murty Library of Classical India and the “Collection Indologie” series published by the IFP-EFEO (Pondicherry), as well as those of the journals Philological Encounters and the Indian Economic and Social History Review.

Forthcoming works include translations of Bilhaṇa’s Vikramāṅkadevacarita and the third book of Kampan’s Tamil Rāmāyaṇam, as well as a study of the interactions between Kashmir and India’s Tamil-speaking south over the medieval period.

2 April 2026 | Guest lecture by Prof. Christian Luczanits (SOAS, University of London)

“Revisiting the Bodhisattva Maitreya in Gandhāran Art”

Dr. Christian Luczanits, SOAS, University of London

Timing:
Thursday, April 2 @ 17.00 CET
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Location:
Locaal 3.30 – Camelot
Blandijn, Campus Boekentoren
9000 Gent, Belgium
(also online)
Abstract:
In my presentation, I will return to a topic that has interested me since my student days, namely the depictions and roles of the Bodhisattva and future Buddha Maitreya in Gandhāran art. I have covered some aspects of this topic in previous work, in particular in my contribution on narrative reliefs with a flask-holding Bodhisattva to the 2005 volume of East and West dedicated to Maurizio Taddei, and since have an unfinished monograph on the subject on my virtual desk.
This time, I will revisit my earlier ideas on the subject in light of more recent publications. Among other topics, I will consider the origin of Maitreya, his designation as Buddha in early inscriptions, the concepts of Maitreya’s paradises, Ketumatī and Tuṣita, as potential precursors of Pure Land Buddhism, and Maitreya as a Bodhisattva representing the brahmanic caste.
Bio:
Christian Luczanits is David L. Snellgrove Senior Lecturer in Tibetan and Buddhist Art at SOAS. His primary research areas are early Buddhist art during and after the Kushana period (1st to 5th centuries) and early Tibetan Buddhist art (7th to 15th centuries) within its wider context. Recent research has centered around an AHRC-funded project on “Tibetan Buddhist Monastery Collections Today”, in particular the documentation and assessment of monastery collections in Mustang, Nepal, and Ladakh, India.
All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online. Please register for the series through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6
(registering once will ensure you will receive links to all future talks in the series)

17 March 2026 | Guest lecture by Prof. Sebastian Nehrdich (Tohoku University)

We are pleased to announce the next guest lecture in the Gandhara Corpora Lecture Series on 17 March 2026:

 

DharmaNexus as a Multilingual Graph of Buddhist Intertextuality: Design Choices, Research Uses, and Future Applications

by Prof. Sebastian Nehrdich (Tohoku University)

Time & venue

  • Tuesday 17 March at 17.00 (5 pm) CET
  • In-person: Vergaderzaal 0.1 Simon Stevin, Plateau – Rozier, Campus Boekentoren, 9000 Gent, Belgium
  • Online: please register through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6

Abstract

Locating textual parallels, translations, citations, and topically related passages across vast collections of texts in multiple languages is a basic requirement of philological work in Buddhist Studies. Recent advances in digitization, OCR, and cross-lingual information retrieval have fundamentally changed access to this kind of evidence, with far-reaching implications for how philological research can be conducted. A central component in this context is DharmaNexus: a database that stores intertextual relationships between passages across languages and sources, and that supports the retrieval and comparison functions used in the Dharmamitra tool ecosystem.
In this presentation, I will discuss DharmaNexus as a verifiable “evidence layer” for AI-assisted multilingual research. I will highlight key design choices and show how intertextual relationships are determined and represented. I will also demonstrate how this data is already used in research-facing tools for discovering and inspecting parallels and reuse patterns in Buddhist literature. Finally, I will address limitations and risks that can arise from over-reliance on these systems, and outline further possible research applications enabled by this architecture.

BIO

Sebastian Nehrdich is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Tohoku University. He completed his PhD in Computational Linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf, co-supervised by Oliver Hellwig and Kurt Keutzer. He holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hamburg. His work integrates digital philology, Buddhist textual analysis, and machine learning. He serves as Director of the Dharmamitra project that was founded at the Berkeley AI Research Lab (BAIR), has managed the ML infrastructure of the ChronBMM project, and has led the development of the BuddhaNexus platform 2018-2023, now continued as DharmaNexus.

 

For more information: charles.disimone@ugent.be

11 March – 27 May 2026 | GCSAS lecture series: “More-than-human South Asia: Ecologies, Knowledge, Bodies, and Senses”

The annual online lecture series organised by the Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies (GCSAS) is dedicated this year to the theme “More-than-human South Asia: Ecologies, Knowledge, Bodies, and Senses”.

Composite elephant, Metropolitan Museum of Art

This lecture series explores South Asia as a space of more-than-human relations among humans, animals, plants, environments, and multiple forms of knowledge, with particular attention to bodies and senses as key sites of interaction with ecological and material worlds. It brings together environmental humanities, anthropology, history, religion, politics, geography, and South Asian studies to examine how ecologies, sensory experiences, and knowledge production are deeply entangled across South Asia and its transregional connections.

All our presenters can be followed online (registration required); some lectures will also be available on campus.

Everyone is warmly invited to join: follow the links in the programme below to register!

PROGRAMME & REGISTRATION

Wednesday 11 March, from 5 pm CET

Eduardo Acosta (Stanford University)

Perpetual Fluctuation: The Rivers of Bengal as Historical Agents, 1750–1800

Registration: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/bf1b6f63-52e5-4fa9-9c38-c6a1f789e2ff@d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c

 

Wednesday 18 March, from 4 pm CET

Priyanka Basu (King’s College, London)

Songs of Climate and Caution: Human and Non-Human Entanglements in Contemporary Scroll Paintings (Patachitra) from Bengal

Registration: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/a7615d65-1052-43f4-b1fb-03e3db1929f8@d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c

 

Wednesday 1 April, from 4 pm CET

Gerrit Lange (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)

A Family Meeting with Nagini Mata: Establishing Relations with the Serpent World, Trees, Grasses and Rivers in a Himalayan Valley

Registration: https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/6d25f018-b0d3-4bed-95ac-cd4d049455b5@d7811cde-ecef-496c-8f91-a1786241b99c

 

Wednesday 22 April, from 4 pm CET

Nuno Grancho (University of Copenhagen)

Shared and Contested Sacred Spaces in South Asian Colonial Cities

 

Wednesday 29 April, from 4 pm CET

James McHugh (University of Southern California)

Surā’s Many Cups: A Survey of Humans using Plants to make Mind-Altering Substances in Pre-modern South Asia

 

Wednesday 13 May, from 4 pm CET

Andrea Gutiérrez (University of Texas at Austin)

Alongside Captive Elephants: History and Religion between Species

 

Wednesday 20 May, from 4 pm CET

Muhamed Riyaz Chenganakkattil (Ghent University)

Camelbacks, Hoofprints, and the Hajj: South Asian Archives of Non-Human Lifeworlds in the Journey to Mecca

 

Wednesday 27 May, from 4 pm CET

Andrew Halladay (London School of Economics)

Tails from Colonial North India: The Lives and Companions of Street Dogs in the United Provinces

 

2 March 2026 | Guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Mau Das Gupta (University of Calcutta)

We are delighted to be hosting the guest lecture “Unmarried Women in Early Indian Texts: From the Ṛgveda to Buddhist Literature” by Prof. Dr. Mau Das Gupta (University of Calcutta)

The event will take place in a hybrid format:

→ Time:

Monday March 2nd, 16:00 CET

→ On campus:

Lokaal 0.8, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent

→ Online: link via Teams

 

Abstract

This lecture explores the position of unmarried women in early Indian literature, tracing developments from the Ṛgveda to early Buddhist texts. Ṛgvedic hymns reveal educated maidens engaged in ritual, inheritance, and social negotiation, even while marriage remained the normative ideal—albeit with certain notable exceptions, such as Āmbhṛṇī Vāc and Urvaśī. Buddhist sources—especially the Therīgāthā, Avadānaśataka, and Jātakas—present new possibilities through the saṃgha, where unmarried women from diverse social backgrounds pursued celibacy, learning, and salvation. By comparing these traditions, the lecture highlights both continuity and change: from ritual participation and limited autonomy in Vedic society to more explicit recognition of female spiritual agency in Buddhism, revealing a complex, non-linear history therein.

 

Speaker bio

Prof. Mau Das Gupta is Professor in Sanskrit at Calcutta University. She was awarded the prestigious Eashan Scholarship and the University gold medal along with many other prizes for her outstanding results in graduate and post-graduate examinations of the University of Calcutta. She did her PhD at Jadavpur University. She is currently serving as Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Calcutta and is, for the second time, the Head of the Department of Sanskrit. A Vedic scholar, Das Gupta has interests in various other fields of literature. A poetess herself, she is also known for writing on various issues concerning Sanskrit and Bengali literature. She is a Sahitya Akademi Awardee (2015) for her translation of Hazari Prasad Dwivedi’s Anamdas ka Potha (2012) into Bengali, and a recipient of the Shivdasani Visiting Fellowship (for the Michaelmas Term, 2019) of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies of Oxford University.

 

 

Prof. Nayanjot Lahiri keynote speaker at EASAA Ghent, 6 – 10 July 2026

We are delighted to announce that Professor Nayanjot Lahiri (Ashoka University) will deliver the keynote address at the 27th International Conference of the European Association for South Asian Archaeology and Art (EASAA 2026), which will take place at Ghent University from 6 to 10 July 2026.

Professor Lahiri is Professor of History at Ashoka University and one of the most distinguished scholars of South Asian early history and archaeology. Her work has been instrumental in shaping contemporary understandings of South Asia’s ancient pasts and its archaeological practices.

She is the author of a wide-ranging and influential body of scholarship, including Pre-Ahom Assam (1991); The Archaeology of Indian Trade Routes (1992); Finding Forgotten Cities: How the Indus Civilization Was Discovered (2005); Marshalling the Past: Ancient India and Its Modern Histories (2012); Ashoka in Ancient India (2015); Monuments Matter: India’s Archaeological Heritage Since Independence (2017); Time Pieces–A Whistle-Stop Tour of Ancient India (2018); Archaeology and the Public Purpose: Writings on and by M.N. Deshpande (2021); and Searching for Ashoka (2023). She is also co-author of Copper and Its Alloys in Ancient India (1996), editor of The Decline and Fall of the Indus Civilization (2000), and co-editor of Ancient India: New Research (2009) and Buddhism in Asia: Revival and Reinvention (2016).

Professor Lahiri was awarded the Infosys Prize 2013 in Humanities–Archaeology, and her book Ashoka in Ancient India received the 2016 John F. Richards Prize from the American Historical Association for the best book in South Asian history.

We are honoured to welcome Professor Lahiri as our keynote speaker and look forward to welcoming her in Ghent.

Further details on her keynote lecture will follow in due course on the website of the conference: https://easaa2026.ugent.be/en.

19 February 2026 | Guest lecture by Prof. Caley Smith (Georgia College & State University)

The GCSAS is delighted to announce its first guest lecture of 2026: “Prolegomena to Any Future Caste”, by Prof. Caley Smith (Georgia College & State University).

 

The event will take place in a hybrid format:

 

ABSTRACT
The study of the complexities of caste in modernity and the medieval period has flourished, thanks in part to shared interest and methods of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of religion, gender, and queer studies. The following monographs represent a broad range of methodologies all applied to understanding the phenomenon of caste: Beyond Caste (Sumit Guha, 2013), Caste in Contemporary India (Surinder Jodhka, 2017), Caste Matters (Suraj Yengde, 2019), The Vulgarity of Caste (Shailaja Paik, 2022). Why has there not been a similar flourishing of caste studies in the earlier period?
Indeed, discussions of the origins of varṇa in recent monographs such as Religions of Early India (Richard Davis, 2024) and India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent (Audrey Truschke, 2025) are virtually unchanged from The Wonder that was India, vol. 1 (A. L. Basham, 1954). Namely, varṇa is presented as the defining timeless and immutable social hierarchy of India, charitably called “social estate” instead of caste. This inertia is striking when a major challenge to the stability of varṇa’s past had already been issued over twenty years previous in the form of Castes of Mind (Nicholas Dirks, 2001). Indeed, important research on the conceptual history of varṇa has, in fact, been on-going, although without being integrated into a new communis opinio. In this talk, I will discuss why this arrested development may have occurred as well as survey significant scholarly advances from the past twenty years in the study of varṇa in the preclassical period, through which I will suggest how this research might serve as a basis for a new historical narrative the invention and re-invention of varṇa.

 

SPEAKER BIO
Caley Smith is a scholar of early South Asian religious history and political imagination. His work focuses primarily on the conceptual continuities and disruptions between the Vedas and emergent ascetic and householder traditions. His current book project, The Invisible Mask, explores the ritual impersonation of the god Indra and its influence on the recitation traditions of early Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Two infosessions about our MA program

For anyone curious about or interested in our new Master’s degree (hybrid), please feel welcome to one of our two online information sessions. During these sessions, we will provide further details about the program, admission and funding opportunities. There will be time for questions and answers.

Both sessions are identical, but accommodate prospective students in different time zones. Click the session below you wish to attend to register and receive the Teams link:

  1. Session 1: January 15th, 2026 at 18:00 CET, 22:30 IST, 12 noon EST, 9:00 PST
  2. Session 2: January 16th, 2026 at 10:00 CET, 14:30 IST, 4:00 EST, 1:00 PST

We look forward to meeting you!

25 November 2025 | Guest lecture by Dr Reinier Langelaar (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

The third lecture of the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series will have Dr. Reinier Langelaar (Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Austrian Academy of Sciences) joining us as the guest speaker, with a talk titled “The Last Words of a God-King: A Corpus of Tibetan Buddhist Narrative Histories”.

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online.

Time & venue

  • When: Tuesday 25 November 2025, at 17:00 (5 pm CET)
  • Where: Faculteitszaal, Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent
  • online attendance: please register through this Google Form: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6 

Abstract

This lecture will present a highly influential corpus of Buddhist historiographies, composed and expanded upon from perhaps the 12th c. CE onward. These works are attributed, as so-called ‘treasure texts,’ to the 7th-c. emperor Songtsen ‘the Profound’ (Tib. srong-btsan sgam-po), himself claimed to be an emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. This corpus constitutes a literary meeting ground for a series of pivotal developments in the realm of Tibetan Buddhist religion, political philosophy, and perceptions of Tibet and its people at large. Weaving compelling tales of Tibetan society’s history, it played a central role in formulating and propagating understandings of Tibet as a Buddhist realm under Avalokiteśvara’s special protection. Though eminently focused on Tibet, these works are also embedded in interregional webs of cultural exchange, potentially drawing inspiration from Indian sūtra literature, Newari Buddhism, Chinese and Khotanese notions of bodhisattva kingship, and more. This talk will introduce this body of works, discuss the particular text-historical and methodological challenges it presents, and show what we may hope to gain from its study.

Bio

Reinier Langelaar is a researcher at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (AAS). His research interests include religious history, pre-modern ethnic identity, religious history, as well as kinship and genealogy. His work has employed historical, text-critical, ethnographic and comparative methods, and has appeared in journals such as Inner Asia, The Medieval History Journal, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. At present, he is key researcher in the FWF-funded Cluster of Excellence ‘EurAsian Transformations.’ In 2025, he was awarded an ERC starting grant for the project FOUNT: ‘The Narrative Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism,’ to be hosted at the AAS (2026-31).

20 November 2025 | Guest lecture by DiGA Project Team (CERES, Bochum): Sustaining Digital Heritage Beyond Funding: Building on the DiGA Project

The Ghent Centre for South Asian Studies (GCSAS) and the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies (GCBS) are pleased to host the second talk in the Fall 2025 iteration of the Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series on 20 November 2025:

Title

Sustaining Digital Heritage Beyond Funding: Building on the DiGA Project

Speakers

Prof. Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
&co.:
Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok), Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher), Abdul Samad (KPDOAM)

Time & venue

  • Thursday, 20 November 2025 at 17:00 (5 pm CET)
  • in person: Faculteitszaal, Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent
  • remotely: please register through this Google Form

Abstract

From 2021 to 2024, the DiGA project (“Digitization of Gandharan Artefacts: A project for the preservation and study of the Buddhist art from Pakistan”) documented a collection of approximately 1,500 Gandharan sculptures preserved at the Dir Museum in Chakdara, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province (KP), Pakistan. These sculptures originated from a dozen archaeological sites in the Shah-kot/Talash zone (around present-day Chakdara), excavated by the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, KP, and the Department of Archaeology at Peshawar University in the 1960s and 1970s. As one of the few Gandharan sculptural corpora with established archaeological provenance, this collection provides a solid foundation for reassessing key questions in Gandhara studies, particularly regarding the history of Buddhism on the right bank of Swat River. The database of the collection is now available on the heidICON platform, ready to lend itself to exciting research avenues.

 

With the project officially coming to an end, however, new questions emerge: how can such a project remain active and relevant beyond its institutional and financial framework? How can its data continue to be curated, enriched, and mobilized for research and public engagement once the funding period ends? This presentation will report some of the project’s activities in the post-funding phase. It will share results from recent research based on the DiGA corpus, sketch the outline of a research program building on the project’s legacy, and discuss ongoing initiatives with KPDOAM on community engagement. Ultimately, this talk invites reflection on the broader question of how digital heritage projects can evolve sustainably once their formal lifecycle has ended.

 

Bios

Jessie Pons (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Jessie Pons is Professor for the History of South Asian Religions at the Center for Religions Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Trained as an art historian, Jessie Pons explores how religion and art intersect and how material objects shape religious communication, lived experiences, and scholarly interpretation.

 

Serena Autiero (Thammasat University, Bangkok):
Serena Autiero is an archaeologist and material culture historian. She is currently a researcher at Thammasat University. Her research interests include cultural exchange in Afroeurasia in pre-modern times, globalization studies, and a special focus on the Indian Ocean World. She authored several publications in international journals and co-edited Globalization and Transculturality from Antiquity to the Pre-Modern World for Routledge.

 

Frederik Elwert (CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Frederik Elwert is associate professor at the Center for Religious Studies, Ruhr University Bochum. His background is in religious studies and sociology. He has applied digital humanities methodologies in different areas of the study of religions.

 

Cristiano Moscatelli (Independent Researcher):
Cristiano Moscatelli specialises in Gandharan studies. His research interests focus on Buddhist visual and material culture and on the interactions between Buddhism and local religious systems in the ancient north-western Indian subcontinent. In addition to his work with DiGA, he was a research fellow with the eartHeritage project – A cultural rescue initiative for earthen heritage, investigating clay and stucco Buddhist sculpture from Central Asia through the development of a digital database for the collection, preservation, and dissemination of archaeological data.

 

Abdul Samad (KPDOAM):
Abdul Samad is Secretary of Tourism, Culture, Archaeology and Museums, Government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Pakistan as well as Director General of Archaeology & Museums KP. He has two decades of experience in South Asian archaeology, history, and culture, extensively exploring Pakistan’s rich heritage, focusing particularly on the Gandhara and Kalash civilizations. As the Director of the Directorate of Archaeology and Museums in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he has led numerous initiatives to preserve and promote the cultural legacy of KP through national and international Projects.

 

All are welcome. The Gandhāra Corpora Lecture Series is in-person and hybrid online (Google Form for online participation: https://forms.gle/TwffQCPuVipUpMvk6).