School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 1-15 of 15 Results
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James Flynn
Ph.D. Student in Classics, admitted Autumn 2023
Master of Arts Student in Religious Studies, admitted Autumn 2024Current Research and Scholarly InterestsJamie Flynn is a PhD student in Ancient History. He focuses on the cultural, religious, and economic history of the eastern Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, ancient India and its connection with Mediterranean societies, and the historical impact of climate change on the ancient world. As an undergrad, he researched the economic history of warfare in the Greek and Roman worlds. His undergraduate thesis compared contemporary trends among Hellenistic philosophers and Indian ascetics of withdrawing from society. During his M.A. degree, he worked on the Yale Nile Initiative, an interdisciplinary group of historians and scientists studying climate change in antiquity, where he covered South Asia. He also worked on digitally documenting Greek epigraphy from Dura Europos and has an ongoing interest in the digital humanities. He studies the Indian languages Sanskrit and Pali in addition to Latin and Greek.
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Christopher Gurley
Ph.D. Student in Religious Studies, admitted Autumn 2022
Master of Arts Student in History, admitted Autumn 2024
Graduate Research Assistant, Religious StudiesBioChristopher Spencer Gurley, Jr is a Ph.D. student in the Religious Studies Department at Stanford University, where he specializes in American Religion and is pursuing a Ph.D. minor in history. His research explores the intersection of African American history and U.S. Catholic cultural life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is specifically interested in the religio-racial histories of U.S. Catholicism, Black identity constructions, Catholicism in the rural south, and the socio-historical politics of class and belonging regarding Black masculinity and manhood.
Before joining the Stanford community, he studied U.S. History at Georgetown University as a Patrick Healy Fellow. Chris earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science from Tennessee State University and his Master of Theological Studies degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School. He also holds a Master of Arts in Religion degree from Yale Divinity School, where he was chosen to become an Elie Wiesel-Martin Luther King, Jr. scholar at Oxford University. -
Julia Hirsch
Ph.D. Student in Religious Studies, admitted Autumn 2021
BioJulia Hirsch is a Ph.D. student in the Religious Studies Department at Stanford University, where she focuses on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. She holds a B.A. from Boston College in Philosophy with minors in Psychoanalytics and Women’s & Gender Studies (2015). She received her M.A. in the History of Art and Archaeology: Religious Arts of Asia from SOAS University of London (2020).
Julia’s current research explores Buddhist material religion and visual culture, power objects, and ritual from an art-historical perspective. Of particular interest are relic cults, funerary rites, and the importance—and soteriological potential—of sensory encounter in South Asian and Himalayan traditions.
Prior to joining Stanford, Julia worked for several years at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, where she continues to serve as a contributing editor covering Buddhist art, film, and publishing. -
Kedao Tong
Ph.D. Student in Religious Studies, admitted Autumn 2018
BioKedao Tong is a PhD candidate in Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religious Studies. His research focuses on the socio-cultural history of Chinese Buddhism and topics related to animals in the Chinese and the broader East Asian contexts. He is currently writing his dissertation, tentatively titled "Rescue the Buddha’s Animal Disciples: The Practice of Buddhist Animal Release in China," which explores the the history of animal release (fangsheng) in Chinese religions from the fifth to the early twentieth centuries.
Kedao received an MA in Chinese from Stanford University, where he wrote a thesis that studies the writing of women’s epitaphs from China’s Northern Dynasties (439-581 AD). Prior to coming to Stanford, he received an Honors BA in East Asian Studies from the University of Toronto. He has taken up coursework and language training in Hong Kong and Japan, and has a background in editorial work in academic and other settings.
