Mu, Sihao

2018–2019 Doctoral Fellowship at Inalco


The “Tianzhu Chinese Buddhist Doctoral Research Scholarship” (1,380 euros for a scholarship of 36 months) is the only scholarship in the world to fund a French doctoral study on Chinese Buddhism. In November 2018, the CEIB organized an expert review and decided to award the 2019 scholarship to Mu Sihao, a doctoral student at Inalco.

Mu Sihao received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from the Department of Sociology of Peking University. In 2018, she was registered as a doctoral student in the direction of “Sociology and Anthropology” at Inalco. Her research topic is “The Textual Community of Contemporary Chinese Buddhism: A Case Study on The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Illumination” (Les communautés textuelles du bouddhisme chinois contemporain: une étude de cas sur Le Grand Traité sur les Étapes du Chemin vers l’Illumination). This study will systematically examine the formation of Buddhist community centered on “The Bodhi Path” in Chinese communities of mainland China, Taiwan, and overseas, with respect to Sino-Tibetan Buddhism exchanges, and the construction of redemptive discourses and ritual practices.