Biography of Prof. Dr. Michael Zimmermann

Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Director of the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies

Department of Religious Studies
Stanford University
Stanford, California, USA

Employment

May 05–present:  Director of the Stanford Center for Buddhist Studies (Division of International Comparative & Area Studies)

Oct 03–present:   Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, Stanford University

Apr–Oct 03:         Postdoc research fellowship at the University of Munich in Indian Studies

Apr 02–Mar 03:    Directing the Nepal Research Centre in Kathmandu (an institute of the German Oriental Society) and the Nepalese branch of the Nepalese-German Manuscript Cataloguing Project (NGMCP) (a joint project between His Majesty’s Government of Nepal and the Asia-Africa Institute of the University of Hamburg) in Nepal

Apr 00–Mar 02:     Instructor and lecturer in Indian Studies, Hamburg University; working for the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project (NGMPP); preparing the title-catalogue of more than 150,000 texts for digital publication

Educational Background

2000         Ph.D.  University of Hamburg in Indology; Dissertation: “The Tathagatagarbhasutra: A Text-critical and Philosophical Analysis with an Annotated Translation from the Tibetan Canonical Version” (passed with summa cum laude)

1996         M.A.  University of Hamburg in Indology, Tibetology, Japanology; Thesis: “The Nine Illustrations of the Buddha-Nature in the Tathagatagarbhasutra”

1988          Business Manager Diploma: Joint Project between the Robert Bosch Corp. and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Stuttgart - Nürnberg, Germany)