October 2, 2018 / 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM (ET)

Join Justin McDaniel, Chair of the Department of religious Studies and Professor of Buddhist and Southeast Asian Studies, and Penn Alumni Travel for an informative session about our upcoming Himalayan Kingdoms trip (November 2018). This webinar will take a brief look at the tour itinerary before discussing travel tips and answering any questions you may have. This session will be open to Q&A throughout.

Justin McDaniel is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies and Professor of Buddhist and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. After living and researching in South and Southeast Asia for many years as a translator, archivist, amulet collector, volunteer teacher, and Buddhist monk, he returned to the States and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies in 2003. His research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali and Sanskrit literature, Southeast Asian Buddhism, Japanese Buddhist architecture, ritual studies, manuscript studies, asceticism, the undead, and general phantasmagoria. His first book is on the history of Buddhist monastic education in Laos and Thailand, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). He is the co-editor of the journals Buddhism Compass and Journal of Lao Studies, and is the former Chair of the Southeast Asian Studies Council and the Thailand, Laos, Cambodia Studies Group of the Association of Asian Studies. His present project looks at the advent of Buddhist leisure (parks, museums, carnivals, film, comics, bird-watching, and collecting) in Japan, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Laos. In 2012 he was named a Guggenheim Fellow.