معرفی
Carmen Meinert holds the Chair for Central Asian Religions and serves as Deputy Director of the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) at Ruhr University Bochum. She is Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded BuddhistRoad project and coordinates the Climate and Culture publication series. Her academic foundation includes research and studies at universities in Bonn, Hamburg, Beijing, Chengdu, Vienna, and the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities, Essen.
Research Focus: Meinert's scholarship centers on the transfer of Buddhism across Central Asia, with emphasis on Tantric rituals, manuscript traditions (Dunhuang/Kharakhoto), and religious syncretism. Key themes include:
- Medieval religious networks and sacred space formation
- Buddhist-Daoist/Tibetan-Chinese doctrinal exchanges
- Ritual adaptation and esoteric practices
- Buddhism's intersections with art, violence, and human rights
- Cultural dimensions of climate change
Publications: Her extensive corpus examines Buddhist transmission along Silk Road networks, with recent works analyzing Tantric ritual texts, sacred geography under Tangut rule, and cross-cultural religious encounters. Publications demonstrate consistent focus on manuscript evidence and comparative frameworks.
Awards & Fellowships:
- Käte Hamburger Kolleg Visiting Research Fellowship
Research Leadership: Meinert directs multiple initiatives:
- ERC project BuddhistRoad (dynamics of religious transfer)
- CRC 1475 'Metaphors of Religion'
- Subproject A03 (ritual-textual networks)
- Climate and Culture publication series (6 volumes)
She previously led projects on Dzogchen tradition development and rNying ma codification. Current work integrates Central Asian religious studies within global comparative frameworks.
