Paulina Kolata

Paulina (Paula) Kolata is a scholar of religion in Japan, specializing in Buddhism, demographic change, materiality, religious economies, lay-temple networks, and ecologies of practice. Her research combines ethnography, archival work, and creative methodologies, including film, photography, audio, and collaborative research.

She is currently revising her first monograph, Fragile Networks: Buddhist Temple Communities in Depopulating Japan, in response to peer review for the University of Hawai‘i Press. The book examines the networked survival strategies of Buddhist temple communities in regional Japan. Her second book project, on Buddhist material excess, explores the environmental and economic conditions of religious practices in contemporary Japan. It builds on her EU-funded project, REFUSE, which explored the ecologies and economies of Buddhist practices in relation to waste and consumption.

Her recent publications include “Working through Gender in Buddhist Spaces,” (Handbook of Women in Japanese Buddhism, 2025); “Rural Fieldwork,” (The New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions, 2024); “Cloned Buddhas: Mapping out the DNA of Buddhist Heritage Preservation,” (Cultural Studies, 2024); and “Gendering Religious Labor and Buddhist Temple Economies in Contemporary Japan” (Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion, Gender and Sexuality, 2024).

Before joining EALC, Paula was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Copenhagen. She has also taught at the University of Copenhagen, Lund University, the University of Manchester, and the University of Chester, offering courses on the anthropology of religion, East and Southeast Asian societies, material religion, and qualitative research methods.

She earned her Ph.D. in Japanese Studies from the University of Manchester (2020), an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (2014), and a B.A. (Hons) in Japanese Studies from the University of Manchester (2011), including extended research stays at Kyoto University and Hiroshima University.