Douglas Ober
Education
PhD, University of British Columbia, 2017
MA, University of Washington, 2009
About
Douglas Ober is Sessional Lecturer in the Department of History and Research Associate at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He has published on numerous Asia-related issues, including self-immolation in Tibet, the politics of Buddhist heritage in India, Hindu art exhibitions in the US, the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, and Soviet influence in colonial India. His doctoral work, for which he received a Fulbright Fellowship, focused on the history and historiography of Buddhism in modern India. Aspects of this work can be found in Modern Asian Studies, Contemporary Buddhism, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, and the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, as well as in edited collections published with Routledge and Bloomsbury Academic.
Research
Douglas Ober specializes in the history of Buddhism in South Asia, especially the modern period (c. 1700 – present). His broader research interests include the history of colonialism, transnational movements, globalization, ethnicity, caste, Dalit studies and cultural ecology. Since 2003, Douglas has studied, worked and/or conducted research in more than a dozen countries in Asia (but primarily India, Bhutan, Tibet and Myanmar).
Publications
Douglas Ober, “Socialism, Russia and India’s Revolutionary Dharma,” in Buddhism in the Global Eye: Beyond East and West, edited by John S. Harding, Victor Sogen Hori and Alexander Soucy (London: Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming March 2020), 71 – 86.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/buddhism-in-the-global-eye-9781350140639/
Douglas Ober, “Buddhism in Colonial Contexts,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Richard K. Payne and Georgios Halkias (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 1 – 35
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.565
Douglas Ober, “From Buddha Bones to Bo Trees: Nehruvian India, Buddhism, and the Poetics of Power,” Modern Asian Studies Vol. 53/4 (2019): 1312 – 1350.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000907
Douglas Ober, “Like embers hidden in ashes, or jewels encrusted in stone’: Rahul Sankrityayan, Dharmanand Kosambi and Buddhist activity in colonial India,” Contemporary Buddhism: an interdisciplinary journal, Vol. 14/1 (2013): 134 – 148.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2013.785246
SEE MORE HERE: https://ubc.academia.edu/DouglasOber
Awards
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connections Grant (with Dr. David Geary, UBC-O) on “Politics and Pathways of Return: Trans-Regional Perspectives on a Buddhist Homeland” (2019)
USIEF Fulbright Fellowship, India (2014 – 2015)
Nehru Humanitarian Award, Institute of Asian Research, UBC (2013)
FLAS Fellowship for Hindi and Tibetan Language Study, University of Washington (2006 – 2009)