Leonard van der Kuijp

Leonard van der Kuijp

Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies
Chair, Committee on Inner Asia and Altaic Studies
On Leave Spring 2024, Fall 2024
Leonard van der Kuijp

Leonard W.J. van der Kuijp is Professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies and chairs the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies. Best known for his studies of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist thought, he is the author of numerous works. Recent publications include Handbook of Tibetan Iconometry. A Guide to the Arts of the 17th Century [with Chr. Cüppers, Ulrich Pagel, and Dobis Tsering Gyal] and Bcom ldan ral gri (1227-1305) on Buddhist Epistemology and Logic: His Commentary on Dignāga's Pramāṇasamuccaya [with A. McKeown]. Van der Kuijp’s research focuses on Indo-Tibetan Buddhist thought, Tibetan Buddhist intellectual history, Tibetan cultural history, and premodern Sino-Tibetan and Tibeto-Mongol political and religious relations. Van der Kuijp received his Master's degree at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his doctorate at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He joined the faculty at Harvard in 1995. He is the former chair of the Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies (now the Department of South Asian Studies). In 1993, van der Kuijp received the MacArthur Fellowship, was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016, and was, in 2018, inducted in the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Van der Kuijp worked at the Nepal Research Center, Kathmandu, the Freie Universitāt, Berlin, and the University of Washington, Seattle. In 1999, he assisted E. Gene Smith in founding the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC), now the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC).

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Department of South Asian Studies
Inner Asian and Altaic Studies
1 Bow St.
p: (617) 496-6871
Office Hours: By appointment

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