Marielle Harrison

Marielle Harrison is a historian of religions whose research explores ideas around diet, identity, and animals in Mahāyāna Buddhist texts. By analyzing portrayals of animals alongside marginalized human groups in early Buddhist scriptures, her work highlights the broader processes through which Buddhist texts constructed and reinforced ontological and social hierarchies. 

Harrison's current book project focuses on the earliest Buddhist arguments for vegetarianism, showing how these texts frame meat eating as an othering act that directly inscribes the karmic consequences of meat eating onto the bodies of meat eaters. 

She received her Ph.D. in History of Religions from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2025.