Stephanie Balkwill

Biography

Dr. Balkwill completed her PhD in Buddhism and Chinese Religions at McMaster University in Canada where she also earned a graduate diploma in Gender Studies and Feminist Research. Upon completion of her PhD she was awarded a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in the Society of Fellows at the University of Southern California where she spent her time researching the ideal of female-to-male sex change in Buddhist texts and exploring the California coast. Having held fellowships from the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation in Buddhist Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Central Library of Taiwan, and the Chiang-ching Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, Dr. Balkwill’s work has taken her across Asia as a both a scholar of Buddhism and a connoisseur of East and South Asian food and music. Dr. Balkwill’s work focuses on the social, literary, and political lives of Buddhist women who lived in China between the fourth and sixth centuries. She is currently working on a book-length study of a 6th-century Empress Dowager who—along with being a public patron of the Buddhist tradition—has been remembered as a fiercely vocal politician, a murderer, a “licentious” woman, and a Buddhist nun. This work dovetails with a second book project she is currently undertaking, a scholarly volume on “Buddhism and Statecraft in East Asia,” which will be co-edited with Dr. James Benn.

Research Interest

Buddhism and Chinese Religions