The Nalanda: Why Study Indian Buddhist Philosophy?

Professor Kellner is the Director of the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia (IKGA), Vienna and is among the foremost scholars of Buddhist philosophy in the world. She is also a Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and the Vice President of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. She was appointed Professor for Buddhist Studies and Principal Investigator at the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in the Global Context” of the University of Heidelberg (W-3) (2010–15). She has also served as Principal Investigator in the FWF special research area “Visions of Community – Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400–1600 CE)” from 2016 to 2019, and is currently directing the FWF project “Rationality, Meditation and Liberation in Indian Buddhism” (2019–23). She studied Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, Japanology, Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Vienna (1987–1994) and completed her PhD in Indian Philosophy at the University of Hiroshima in 1999.

She will be in conversation with Professor Pankaj Chandra, Vice Chancellor of Ahmedabad University. He was the Director of IIM Bangalore (2007-2013) and Professor of Operations and Technology Management at IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore. He has taught at various institutions such as McGill University, University of Geneva, International University of Japan, Cornell University and Renmin University (Beijing). He holds a BTech from Banaras Hindu University and a PhD from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of ‘Building Universities That Matter: Where Are Indian Institutions Going Wrong?’ (Orient BlackSwan, 2017).

Date: Wednesday 13th April, 2022
Time: 5 pm
Venue: Room 019, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Ahmedabad University