Matthew W. King

Matthew W. King is Professor of Transnational Buddhism at the University of California, Riverside. He specializes in Inner Asian Buddhism with a special focus on the Tibet-Mongol interface during the Yuan and Qing periods. He has published widely on the history of Buddhist scholasticism, medicine, and institution building, and on political theory in Inner Asia. He has also explored the history of Inner Asian Buddhist interactions with circulating intellectual traditions during this period, including European natural philosophy and humanism, biomedicine, nationalism, state socialism, and Buddhist Studies. His first book, Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire (Columbia University Press, 2019), won several awards, including the American Academy of Religion’s 2020 award for Best Book in Textual Study. His most recent book is In the Forest of the Blind: The Eurasian Journey of Faxian’s Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Columbia University Press, 2022).