Jessica Main

Associate Professor of Buddhism, University of British Columbia

Regional Focus: East Asia, Southeast Asia
Date of Comments: Session 6, March 11, 2021

Biography:

Jessica began work at UBC in 2009 as the Tung Lin Kok Yuen Canada Foundation Chair and Director of UBC’s Buddhism and Contemporary Society Program. In 2014, the program was renamed The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhism and Contemporary Society, and both the chair and program form part of a network of academic institutions and scholars around the world supported by The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation 何鴻毅家族基金. Her research concerns modern Buddhist ethics, social action, and institutional life in East and Southeast Asia. She completed her dissertation on the modern history of human rights and descent-based discrimination in Japanese True Pure Land, or Shin Buddhism, at McGill University. She has had the opportunity to work with a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funded project on religion and health, investigating possible contributions of Buddhism to a physician’s ethic. She is also a member of the steering committee for the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies (IASBS).

(This biography is taken from the University of British Columbia, Department of Asian Studies)