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Mengqiu Tian is PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies within the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. Her research project “Vignettes of the Life of the Buddha at Dunhuang during the Tang and Five Dynasties“, supervised by Prof. Dr. Daniela De Simone and Prof. Dr. Christoph Anderl, explores the portrayal of episodes of the Buddha’s life in the Dunhuang grottoes.

Mengqiu Tian has completed her Master study of Kunstgeschichte Ostasiens and Sinologie at Heidelberg Universität. He conducted fieldwork at Dunhuang grottoes (09, 2021) and the musée Guimet (01, 2022) funded by Heinz-Götze travel grant and was a one-year visitor of SOAS, University of London. Visited the Stein’s collection at the British Museum.

On January 27, 2025, GCBS researcher Xiaoxiao Xu defended his PhD dissertation titled “The Poet–Monk Taixu and His Imagery World,” written within the framework of the joint PhD program between Ghent University (supervisor Prof. Dr. Ann Heirman) and the University of Perugia (supervisor Prof. Dr. Ester Bianchi).  The examination committee consisted of Prof. Dr. Ji Zhe (INALCO), Prof. Dr. Heng (Michael) Chen (UGent), and Dr. Mariia Lepneva (UGent).

Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947) is well-known to scholarship as an advocate of radical reforms of the Buddhist community and the author of the concept of “Buddhism of the human realm.” Xiaoxiao Xu’s dissertation revealed that, beyond these achievements, Taixu possessed yet another identity—a poet-monk. Through literature studies methodology, the author established that Taixu’s poetical creativity often went beyond presenting his religious views. Instead, the great Buddhist leader was inclined to use his verses for expressing his personal thoughts and emotions. This makes his poetry a valuable entry point for understanding his personality.

(2) “Tracing Macro-cyclical Change Through Micro-cycles in Historical Chinese”

GCBS reading group activities began on November 8 this year. PhD student Longyu Zhang presented her preliminary reading of narrative passages from Dharmaguptaka-vinaya, with a focus on the use of modal markers in these texts. Longyu began by introducing the terminological apparatus she uses for analysing necessity, possibility, and volition. During the rest of the session, we immersed ourselves in the analysis of specific examples, narrowing down our interpretations as we got acquainted with the unfolding of the story.

August Sundin is PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies within the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. He is a member of the project “Corpora in Greater Gandhāra. Tracing the development of Buddhist Textuality and Gilgit/Bamiyan manuscript networks in the first millennium of the common era” led by Professor Charles DiSimone.

August received his Bachelors in Buddhist Studies and Masters in Tibetan Translation from Kathmandu University in Nepal. His past research has focused on the role of cultural interpretation in Indo-Tibetan historiographical works as well as the issues of reading Indic materials in their Tibetan translations. August’s current research focuses on the application of philology and textual comparison to Buddhist manuscripts and the history of Buddhist textual networks centred in Gandhāra between the fourth and ninth centuries c.e.

On 10th October, Mr Saurabh Kumar, Ambassador of India to Belgium and Luxembourg, and to the European Union, accompanied by Mr Venkateswaran Narayanan, First Secretary Press, Information and Culture visited Universiteit Gent to meet the Rector, Prof Rik Van de Walle, and the members of our research group and learn more about our work, and current and future activities. GCBS’s Professors Ann Heirman, Charles DiSimone, and Daniela De Simone  attended the meeting.

Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies had a notable presence at the 25th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) held at Tallinn University, Estonia on 27-30 August, 2024. Our professors, postdocs and PhD students made nine presentations at various panels:

• Prof. Dr.  Ann Heirman (Ghent University), “Ants in Vinaya Texts: Between India and China”
• Prof. Dr. Bart Dessein (Ghent University), “‘Yi Fofa piping shehui zhuyi’ (以佛法批評社會主義; Criticizing Socialism with Buddhism)”
• Prof. Dr. Christoph Anderl (Ghent University), “Text-Image Relations in the Panels on Buddha’s Life in Mogao Cave 61”
• Dr. Anna Sokolova (Ghent University), “Invoking Deities for the Deceased: Integration of Buddhist Rituals into Mortuary Practises in Medieval China”
• Dr. Mariia Lepneva (Ghent University), “The Dynamics of Chinese Buddhism During the Ming and Qing: Social Network Analysis Based on a Combined Dataset”
• Jiahang Yu and Prof. Dr. Christoph Anderl (Ghent University), “A Linguistic Study of the Donkey Mourning Text in Or. 8210/ S.1477”
• Longyu Zhang (Ghent University), “Research on the Grammaticalisation of Níngkě 寧可 in Medieval Chinese”
• Massimiliano Portoghese (Ghent University), “Why do Śramaṇas Take the Tonsure? Perceptions and Symbolism of the Shaven Head in Ancient and Early Medieval China”
• Nguyen Khuong Hong Ngoc (Ghent University), “Practical Learning (實學) and Its Influence on Educational Transformation in Eighteenth-Century Vietnam”

In addition, GSBC’s members participated in the “Roundtable on academic publishing in the field of Chinese religions” organized by the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions (SSCR). Prof. Dr. Ann Heirman serves as moderator, and Dr. Anna Sokolova shared the experience of publishing here recent monograph, The Awakening of the Hinterland: The Formation of Regional Vinaya Traditions in Tang China.