In 2022, the Centre, jointly with the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, began the sponsorship of a post doctoral fellow position, a resident scholar teaching courses in the DSR, conducting research, and participating in our events.
2026–2027 Postdoctoral Fellow, Sinae Kim
Sinae Kim earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2024. She specializes in the history of premodern Chinese Buddhism, with a focus on the practical dimensions of religious life. Drawing on a wide range of transmitted and excavated materials, her research examines the intersections of ritual, oral performance, and vernacular storytelling in East Asian traditions. Her scholarship also explores preaching culture, manuscript studies, and Buddhist canons and commentaries, offering new perspectives on the lived experiences and textual cultures of premodern Chinese Buddhism. She is also interested in the history of Buddhist nuns in modern Korea, Korean pioneer Buddhism in North America, and Buddhist monastic clothing and textiles as expressions of religious identity and practice. Prior to joining the Ho Centre, she held a contract position as Assistant Professor (2024-2026), jointly appointed in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, where she taught courses on Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism, Buddhist Ritual, Buddhist Storytelling and Performance in East Asia, The History of Buddhist Meditation, and Transnational Buddhism.
2024–2026 Postdoctoral Fellow, Geethika Dharmasinghe
Geethika Dharmasinghe earned her Ph.D. in Asian Literature, Religion and Culture from Cornell University in 2022 . She specializes in the relationship of Buddhists to violence in contemporary times, drawing on substantial training in cultural anthropology. Her dissertation research, Terror-Making in Buddhist World was funded by the Wenner Gren Dissertation Fieldwork grant. From Fall 2022 to Fall 2023, she held the post of Visiting Assistant Professor at Colgate University where she taught a broad range of religious studies and Asian studies classes. Her other teaching and research interests converge around literatures on New Social Movements, Buddhist modernity, nationalism, and the political economy of South and Southeast Asia.
2022–2024 Postdoctoral Fellow, Michael Ium
Michael was born and raised in Toronto as the child of South Korean immigrants, before going on to complete degrees at the University of Toronto (B.Sc.), Maitripa College (M.A.), and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Religious Studies (M.A., Ph.D.). A historian of religion, his research focuses on the religions of Tibet and South Asia, and in particular, the early history of the Geluk tradition in Tibet. Along with promoting the study of Buddhism in Canada as an academic discipline, Michael is interested in exploring what makes the Canadian Buddhist context unique, whether Canada’s status as a multicultural society, or the theological interactions of Buddhism in Canada with other religious communities. In 2024, Michael began a postdoc position at the Austrian Academy of Sciences Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia.
