Kay Chen

Kay (Ke) Chen’s research revolves around Buddhist monasticisms in middle-period East Asia.  Her work explores how, during the formative period when Buddhist monastic rules first arrived in East Asia, these regulations and local monastic practices shaped each other within the context of social systems and secular moralities. She is also deeply interested in socioeconomic networks of mountain-based religious communities, gazetteer compilation, the formation of locality, geospatial imagination, worldmaking, and the interplay among these forces in medieval China. Kay holds a B.A. and an M.A. both in Pre-modern Chinese History from Peking University. In her free time, she enjoys films, mountains, and non-fictions.