Justin McDaniel

Dr. Justin Thomas McDaniel is a writer, teacher, and pedagogical innovator. He is the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his PhD in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard University. He has published six books in his field, edited ten more, and published over 100 scholarly articles and reviews in the fields of Burmese, Lao, Pali, Shan, Sanskrit, Tai Lei, and Sanskrit literature, Buddhist ritual, Southeast Asian Art and Architecture, Manuscript Studies, and Monasticism.

He has been a Fulbright, Mellon, Rockefeller, Templeton, Carpenter, and Guggenheim Fellow, and has won numerous teaching and advising awards including the Kahin Prize and the Becker Prize for writing.

He was named one of the top ten most innovative professors in America by the Chronicle of Higher Education and one of the hundred top cultural influencers by Cultured Magazine in 2026. His work on pedagogical methods in the courses Existential Despair and Living Deliberately has been featured on NPR, Huffington Post, Washington Post, the New York Times and many other venues. He lives in Philadelphia.

His latest book, Existential Despair (Penguin/Crown) will be published in January 2027 and is available for pre-sale here and will be available in German, Italian, Korean and other languages soon.

His research foci include Lao, Thai, Pali and Sanskrit linguistics and literature, Southeast Asian Buddhism, Thai and Lao art, ritual studies, manuscript studies, and Southeast Asian history. He is the chair of the Thailand, Laos, Cambodia Studies Association and the founder of the NEH funded Thai Digital Monastery Project. He has taught courses on Hinduism, Southeast Asia Literature, Buddhism, Myth and Symbolism, Southeast Asian History, and the Study of Religion after living and researching in South and Southeast Asia for many years as a Social Science Research Council and Fulbright Fellow, translator, volunteer teacher, and Buddhist monk. His recent publications appear in the Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, the Journal of the Siam Society, Journal of Burma Studies, as well as contributions to collected articles on Buddhism and Modernity, Fragile Palm-leaf Manuscript research, and Pali literature in Laos and Thailand. His book, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand, is published by the University of Washington Press (2008) and won the prestigious Harry Benda Prize for best first book in Southeast Asian Studies from the Association of Asian Studies. His second book is The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand won the Kahin Prize.