Stephan Kigensan Licha joined the faculty in 2023. He was most recently with the Department of Japanese Studies at the University of Heidelberg. He received his PhD from SOAS (London) in 2012. Prof. Licha specializes in the intellectual history of Japanese Buddhism, with an emphasis on the interactions between the pre-modern tantric, Tendai, and Zen traditions, and the global history of Buddhist modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He has published widely on these topics, and his monograph, Esoteric Zen: Zen and the Tantric Teachings in Premodern Japan was recently published (2023) by Brill. A volume he coedited (with Hans Martin Krämer), Learning from the West, Learning from the East: The Emergence of the Study of Buddhism in Japan and Europe Before 1900) was also published by Brill in 2023.

Prof. Licha's courses include "The Globalization of Japanese Religions: From the 19th Century to the Present" and our Core course, "Religion: Cosmos, Conscience, and Community II" as well as "Buddhist Meditation: Tradition, Transformation, Modernization" and "Buddhist Thought in Japan."

Office hours: Thursdays, 14.00-16.00, in person, otherwise per appointment.
Book time with Stephan Licha