The three investigators in this project have a proven track record. We have edited two volumes on Buddhism in Canada, which involved identifying and encouraging scholars doing relevant research, organizing conferences and conference panels, editing papers, and so on. The team is truly interdisciplinary: Harding is an historian, Hori was trained as a philosopher but spent many years as a Buddhist monk, and Soucy is an anthropologist. The three together have geographic interests and extensive knowledge of Japan, Vietnam, China and Taiwan. Furthermore, all three are deeply committed to the study of Buddhism in Canada, in the West, and globally. As testament to this commitment, we have presented 50 different conference papers and 4 keynote addresses dedicated specifically to this topic. Crucial to the success of the project is the fact that all three of us work together well.
Victor Sōgen Hori
McGill University
Victor Sōgen Hori received his PhD in Western philosophy in 1976 from Stanford University. The same year, he was ordained and thereafter spent thirteen years as a monk in the Rinzai Zen monastery system. He returned to North America in 1990 and in 1993 joined the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University, where he is presently associate professor in Japanese Religions. Research interests include Zen Buddhism, Buddhism in the West, Kyoto School of Philosophy, and Japanese Religion. Publications include Flowers on the Rock (2014) and Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada, co-edited with John S. Harding and Alexander Soucy (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2010); Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Zen Kōan Practice (University of Hawai’i Press 2003);The Wheel and the Web: Collected Papers of the Teaching Buddhism Conference, co-edited with Richard P. Hayes and Mark Shields (Curzon Press 2002); The Ten Oxherding Pictures: Lectures by Yamada Mumon Roshi (University of Hawai’i Press 2004).
John Harding
University of Lethbridge
John S. Harding received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently associate professor in the Religious Studies Department and coordinator of Asian Studies at the University of Lethbridge, Canada. Research interests include Japanese Buddhism, the cross-cultural currents that have shaped the global circulation of Buddhism in the last 150 years, and issues of theory and method in religious studies. He is the author of Mahayana Phoenix: Japan’s Buddhists at the1893 World’s Parliament of Religions (2008), the co-author with Hillary Rodrigues ofIntroduction to the Study of Religion (2009) and The Study of Religion: A Reader (2013), the co-editor with Victor Sōgen Hori and Alexander Soucy of Flowers on the Rock (2014), Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada (2010), and the editor of the volume Studying Buddhism in Practice (2012).
Alec Soucy
Saint Mary’s University
Alexander Soucy is an associate professor at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, and the chair of the Religious Studies Department. He is the author of The Buddha Side: Gender, Power, and Buddhist Practice in Vietnam and several articles on Vietnamese Buddhism and gender. He also co-edited Flowers on the Rock (2014) and Wild Geese: Buddhism in Canada and has published several essays on Buddhism in Canada, particularly relating to Vietnamese Buddhism. Along with John Harding and Victor Hori, he has been active in promoting the study of Buddhism in Canada by organizing conferences and conference panels on the subject. His current research looks at transnational Vietnamese Buddhism and the rising popularity of Zen in Vietnam.