Buddha

Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies

Department of Classics and Religion

History

The Numata Chair is named for Dr. Yehan Numata (1897-1994), chairman of the Mitutoyo Manufacturing Company. A devout Buddhist, Dr. Numata believed that the dissemination of the Buddhist teachings would be beneficial to humanity; he made the international promotion of Buddhism a lifelong project.

The Numata Endowment sponsored international scholars who resided at the University of Calgary for one term or longer to teach, conduct research, and give public lectures from 1988 to 2006. Since 2008, the Chair has been a tenured position.

Current Chair

Dr. Wendi Adamek

Dr. Wendi Adamek

Wendi L. Adamek is Professor in the Department of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary and holder of the Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies. Her research interests include medieval Chinese Buddhism, Buddhist art and archeology, Yogācāra, contemporary phenomenology, and permaculture.

Available through the University of Hamburg Buddhist Studies Series, her 2021 book Practicescapes and the Buddhists of Baoshan is a multidisciplinary study of a seventh-century community in Henan, China. Previous publications include The Mystique of Transmission: On an Early Chan History and its Contexts (AAR Award for Excellence in Textual Studies, 2008) and The Teachings of Master Wuzhu (2011). She has also published a YA novel, Kunlun.

Born in Hawai’i, she earned her degrees at Stanford University and has held research fellowships at Kyoto University (Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai and Fulbright), Peking University (NEH and Fulbright), the Stanford Humanities Center, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the Calgary Institute for the Humanities.

Wendi Adamek CV

 An interview with Wendi L. Adamek: New Books in Buddhist Studies Podcast. Wendi L. Adamek, Practicescapes and the Buddhists of Baoshan (Hamburg Buddhist Studies, 2021). 

"Rehumanizing the Dynamics of Exchange.” Workshop, “Buddhism and Social Change.” Dharma Drum Vancouver, Sept. 21, 2019.

Contact

Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies
Department of Classics & Religion
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive NW
Calgary AB Canada T2N 1N4 
 

Chairholder: Dr. Wendi Adamek
Office: Social Sciences 520
Phone: 403.220.3073
Email: numatach@ucalgary.ca

Past Chairholders

Sept. – Dec. 1988

Akira Yuyama

Jan. – April 1991

Michael Hahn

Sept. – Dec. 1991

James Boyd

Sept. – Dec. 1993

Charles Prebish

Jan. – April 1994

Paul Williams

Sept. – Dec. 1995

Tom Tillemans

Sept. – Dec. 1996

Shoryu Katsura

Jan. – April 2000

K. L. Dhammajoti

Sept. – Dec. 2000

John Clifford Holt

Jan. – April 2001

T. Tillemans

Sept. – Dec. 2001

Y. Karunadasa

Sept. – Dec. 2001 | Sept. – June 2003/04

Charles Willemen

Sept. – Apr. 2004/05

Eva Neumaier

Sept. – Dec. 2006

John Clifford Holt

Research

Learn about past lectures and talks and read papers given by our distinguished guests.

  1. March 3, 2023

    Dr. Anne Dutton
    Yale University

    • The Annual Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — Medicalizing Mysticism: Perspectives on the Assimilation of Mindfulness and Psychedelics in the Psychological Sciences

  2. February 9, 2023

    Tulku Neten Rinpoche
    Toronto, Canada

    • How to Cultivate Compassion and Wisdom

  1. Nov. 3, 2017

    Dr. Eric Huntington
    Postdoctoral Fellow
    Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, Stanford University

    • Recentering Buddhist Cosmology: Concepts of Geographic Space in Ritual and Art

  1. March 16, 2016

    Dr. David Hoy
    Visiting Scholar, University of Calgary

    • The Annual Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — Awakening from the Illusion of our Separation: A Buddhist Perspective on the Ecological Crisis

  1. March 24, 2015

    Richard K. Payne
    Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies
    Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, CA

    • The Annual Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — Strategies in Studying the Homa:  Ritual Studies, History, Syntax  

  2. March 23, 2015

    Richard K. Payne
    Dean and Yehan Numata Professor of Japanese Buddhist Studies
    Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, CA

    • The Annual Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — The Study of Buddhist Tantra: State of the Art 

  3. April 17, 2015

    Dr. Frederick M. Smith
    Professor of Sanskrit and Classical Indian Literature
    Departments of Religious Studies, and Asian and Slavic Languages and Literatures
    University of Iowa

    • Possession as Demonic and Oracular, and Possession as Metaphor, in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism

  1. Dec. 2, 2014

    Professor Bee Scherer
    Chair in Comparative Religion, Gender and Sexuality
    Canterbury Christ Church University, U.K.

    • Variant Dharma: Buddhist queers, queered Buddhisms

  2. Sept. 18, 2014

    Professor Wendy Swartz
    Associate Professor of Chinese Literature, Rutgers University

    • A Poet’s Repertoire in Early Medieval China 

  1. Oct. 8, 2013

    Anne Carolyn Klein/Rigzin Drolma
    Department of Religious Studies
    Rice University

    • The Third Annual Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — Vision, Song and Self: Contemplative Practice in Western and Tibetan Landscapes

  2. Oct. 7, 2013

    Anne Carolyn Klein/Rigzin Drolma
    Department of Religious Studies
    Rice University

    • The Third Annual Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — Nine Vehicles, One Path: Short Takes from Jigme Lingpa and Longchen Rabjam

  1. Sept. 25, 2012

    Dr. Gregory Schopen
    University of California, Los Angeles and Brown University

    • The Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — Debt, Slavery, and Monasticism: The Limited Reach of Formal Doctrine in Buddhist and Christian Monastic Settings

  2. Sept. 24, 2012

    Dr. Gregory Schopen
    University of California, Los Angeles and Brown University

    • On the Fragrance of the Buddha, the Scent of Monuments, and the Odor of Images

  3. April 3, 2012

    Dr. Lara Braitstein
    McGill University

    • Doringpa’s ‘spiritual biography’ (rnam thar) & the 10th Shamarpa: on the Trail of an 18th century Renegade Lama

  4. April 2, 2012

    Dr. Lara Braitstein
    McGill University

    • Composing Awakening: Saraha and his Adamantine Songs

  1. Oct. 5, 2011

    Dr. Chen-kuo Lin
    National ChengChi University

    • Epistemology and Meditation in Jingyin Huiyuan’s Essay on “Three Measures of Cognition”

  2. Oct. 4, 2011

    Dr. Chen-kuo Lin
    National ChengChi University

    • Understanding Buddhist Epistemology in Medieval China: A Cross-Cultural Reflection

  3. Sept. 20, 2011

    Dr. Jonathan Silk
    Leiden University

    • The Inaugural Leslie S. Kawamura Memorial Lecture — Toward a Meaningful Academic Study of Buddhism

  4. Sept. 19, 2011

    Dr. Jonathan
    Silk Leiden University

    • What Can Students of Indian Buddhist Literature Learn from Biblical Text Criticism?

  5. Aug. 25, 2011

    Sakya Trizin

    • The Virtue of Compassion in Difficult Times

  6. April 5, 2011

    Dr. Collett Cox
    University of Washington

    • The Dawn of Dogma: Commentary and Abhidharma Scholasticism in the Ancient Buddhist Texts of Gandhāra

  7. April 4, 2011

    Dr. Collett Cox
    University of Washington

    • Beginning at the Beginning: Research on the Oldest Surviving Buddhist Manuscripts

  1. Oct. 26, 2010

    Dr. Ronald Davidson
    Fairfield University

    • Mahayana Buddhist rituals and the method of coded phrases (dhāraṇī)

  2. Feb. 5, 2010

    Thupten Jinpa Institute of Tibetan Classics, Canada Center for Compassion, and Altruism Research and Education Stanford University, USA

    • The Role of Compassion in Tibet's Assimilation of Buddhism

  1. Sept. 24, 2009

    Dr. James Apple

    • The Dalai Lamas: A cultural Heritage of Embodied Compassion

  2. April, 2009

    Numata Symposium hosts Buddhism scholars

  1. Oct. 8, 2008

    Dr. Leslie Kawamura
    Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies

    • Thervada: Now and Then - Rethinking Approaches to the Study of Buddhism in S. and S.E. Asia

  1. Nov. 8, 2006

    Dr. John Holt
    Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies

    • The State of Buddhist Studies in Canadian Universities

  1. April 5, 2005

    Dr. Eva Neumaier
    Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies

    • bSam gtan mig sgron and the rDzog chen Quotations: A Study in the Production of Tibetan Texts

  1. May 14-15, 2004

    Past Chairholders: Kuala Lumpur Dhammajoti (Sri Lanka), Michael Hahn (Germany), John Holt (U.S.A.), Yakupitiyage Karunadasa (Sri Lanka), Shoryu Katsura (Japan), Charles Prebish (U.S.A), Tom Tillemans (Switzerland), Charles Willemen (Belgium), Paul Williams (England)

    • Numata 15th Anniversary Symposium, reuniting past Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies Chairholders

    Download the special issue of Pacific World Journal »

  2. March 4, 2004

    Dr. Charles Willemen
    Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies

    • The Sutra "School" in Nara Japan

  1. Nov. 14, 2002

    Dr. Charles Willemen
    Numata Chair in Buddhist Studies

    • From Where Did Zen Come?

  1. Fall 2001

    Yakupitiyage Karunadasa International Buddhist University, Thailand

    • The Early Buddhist Teaching On the Practice of the Moral Life

    Download »

  2. Winter 2001

    Thomas Tillemans U. Lausanne
    Switzerland

    • Trying to be Fair to Madhyamika Buddhism

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  1. Fall 2000

    John Clifford
    Holt Bowdoin College

    • The Hindu Buddha and the Buddhist Visnu: Religious Transformations in India and Sri Lanka

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  2. Winter 2000

    Kuala L. Dhammajot
    Kelaniya University

    • The Sarvastivada Doctrine of Simultaneous Causality

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  1. Fall 1996

    Shoryu Katsura Hiroshima University

    • How did the Buddhists prove something? The Nature of Buddhist Logic

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  1. Fall 1995

    Thomas Tillemans U. Lausanne
    Switzerland

    • What Would it Be Like to Be Selfless? Hinayanist Versions, Mahayanist Versions and Derek Parfit

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