CONFERENCES

Law, Buddhism and Social Change: A Conversation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama September 20- 21, 2006A two-day academic conference "Law, Buddhism, and Social Change" at the University at Buffalo will open with a conversation with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama on the morning of Wednesday, September 20, in the Law Library in O'Brian Hall on the North Campus. This important conference represents the path-breaking efforts of the Law and Buddhism project at UB, the only such academic endeavor in the world. Although Law and Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are established and well-endowed areas of study, the study of Law and Buddhism is new. Details

Past Conferences

Conversations on Buddhism and Law March 6-11, 2005
The Law and Buddhism Project was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Conference and Study Grant to organize a conference at the Rockefeller Conference Center overlooking Lake Como in Bellagio, Italy. The week-long discussions took place in the spring of 2005 and focused on Law, Buddhism and Theft. The organization of the conference and expenses were shared by the Baldy Center at UB.

The papers presented ranged from detailed studies of cases of theft to broad overviews of Buddhism and Law in Japanese History and covered many countries in Asia -- from Mongolia and Bhutan to Sri Lanka and Burma. Negotiations are underway to publish these papers either as an edited volume or as the first of several volumes on Law and Buddhism.

Scholars who participated in the Bellagio conference:
Timothy Brook, Head of the Institute for Asian Research at the University of British Columbia; Jose Cabezon, renowned scholar and translator for the Dalai Lama, from U.C. Santa Barbara; Bernard Faure, from Religious Studies at Stanford University; Leslie Gunawardena, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; Andrew Huxley, senior lecturer in Law, School of Oriental and Asian Studies, London; James Ketelaar, Professor and Director of the East Asian Center, University of Chicago; Petra Kieffer-Pulz, an early Indian and Tibetan text expert from Wittenberg, Germany; Justin McDaniel, Religious Studies, University of California, Riverside; Mark Nathan, Korean studies, UCLA; Ryuji Okudaira, researcher on Burma from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies; Frank Reynolds, Emeritus Professor of Buddhist Studies, University of Chicago; Peter Skilling, Palm Leaf Manuscript Project, Bangkok Thailand; Winnifred Sullivan, Professor, University at Buffalo Law School on leave 2006-07 at the National Humanities Center, formerly at the American Bar Foundation and the Chicago Divinity School; Mark Tamthai, Director of the Institute for Religion and Culture, Chiang Mai, Thailand; Vesna Wallace, Professor of Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara; Richard Whitecross, School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

Locating Law in Buddhist Cultures: A Workshop June 4 - 5 2004

A small number of scholars from disciplines including law, Buddhist Studies, and Asian Studies, anthropology, history, sociology and religion came together to begin a collaborative discussion on developing Law and Buddhism as a field of study. This first workshop of the Law and Buddhism Project was supported by the Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy at the University at Buffalo Law School.
Program and participant details may be found here
Participant List