Dr. Gareth Fisher, 2011-2012
Curriculum Vitae
Gareth Fisher is now at the Syracuse University.
Gareth Fisher was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Religious Diversity.
He received his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Virginia in 2006. His research focuses on the evolution of new Buddhist movements within an environment of rapid cultural change in present-day Beijing. He is particularly interested in how Buddhists creatively combine ideological fragments from China’s recent past to form moral systems and ethical frameworks to either resist or embrace evolving social norms. He is also researching the cultural politics of new Buddhist temple construction in rural China. He is interested in examining the intersections between urban-based Buddhists who fund temple construction as a means to evangelize a global religion and local residents who adapt the temples to meet more localized and personal spiritual interests.