Congratulations to Andrea and Andrew for being awarded the 2021-22 Phool Maya Chen Scholarship!

Andrea Wollein is a PhD candidate at the Department for the Study of Religion. She holds an MA in Modern South Asian Studies and a BA in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. Her dissertation explores innovations within the Newar Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition through two case studies of (non-celibate) monastic institutions (Skt. vihāra): (1) Yampi Mahāvihāra, Ī Bahī (in Tibetan known as e yi gtsug lag khang) in Lalitpur, Nepal and (2) Nṛtya Maṇḍala Mahāvihāra in Portland, Oregon, USA.

Andrew Dade is a PhD candidate in the Department for Study of Religion in collaboration with the Centre for South Asian Studies.  They completed their MLIS & MS Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee.  He is interested in the interpretations and varied work of sound and media for Buddhist traditions.  Their combination of ethnographic research and textual analysis follows devotional, philosophical, and ideological engagements of the Pali Abhidhamma, a Buddhist phenomenological-soteriological treatise, in Myanmar (Burma) and South/Southeast Asia more broadly.