Stefania Travagnin

Stefania Travagnin is Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Culture in Asia at the University of Groningen. Travagnin obtained a BA and MA in Chinese Studies at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice (2000), and a PhD in the Study of Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2009). Before joining the University of Groningen in 2013, she taught at the University of Missouri and Penn State University (USA), the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) and the University of Manchester (UK).

She has done extensive fieldwork research among Buddhist communities in Taiwan and mainland China, and was visiting scholar in several institutions such as Academia Sinica, the Centre for Chinese Studies at the National Central Library of Taipei, the Institute of Religious Studies at Sichuan University and the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies at National Cheng Chi University. Her research explores Buddhism and Buddhists in mainland China and Taiwan from the late Qing up to the present time (especially history and practice of Buddhist women in Taiwan, identity formation of Taiwanese Buddhism, renjian fojiao 人間佛教, life and writings of the monk Yinshun 印順, conceptual and institutional history of the Sangha education during the Qing and the Republican period), Buddhist texts also in their relation with the extra-textual (mainly the texts T1509 Da zhidu lun 大智度論, T1564 Zhong lun 中論, and T1521 Shizhu piposha lun 十住毗婆沙論), religion and media in China and Taiwan, concepts and methods for the study of Chinese religions. Her publications include the edited volume Religion and Media in China: Insights and Case Studies from the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong (Routledge, 2016), and the monograph Yinshun and his Exposition of Madhyamaka: New Studies of the Da Zhidu Lun in Twentieth-century China and Taiwan (forthcoming with Equinox). She is director of the three-year project ‘Mapping Religious Diversity in Modern Sichuan’ funded by the CCKF (2017-2020), with Elena Valussi as co-director. More about her research and samples of her publications can be found on her website stefaniatravagnin.net.