Rafal Felbur

Dr. Rafal Felbur is a Lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the Karl Jaspers Centre, Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS), Heidelberg University. His research focuses on transcultural exchanges between India and China in the first millennium CE, particularly the impact of Buddhism on Sinitic culture through textual analysis of Buddhist scriptures, commentaries, and official records. He develops Digital Humanities tools for critical editions and teaches courses on Buddhism's transnational history.

Education: PhD in Religious Studies (Stanford University, 2018), Postdoctoral Fellowship at Leiden University (2019–2022) under the ERC-funded 'Open Philology' project. Academic memberships include the American Academy of Religion and International Association for Buddhist Studies.

Research interests include Buddhist textual transmission, monastic agency, and digital methodologies. Key contributions include editing the Ratnakūṭa Studies series and developing critical edition tools. His work bridges philology with cultural history, emphasizing material practices and textual networks.

Notable awards include Mellon and Freeman-Spogli Fellowships. Current projects involve bilingual critical editions of apologetic Buddhist texts and computational analysis of multilingual Buddhist corpora.