About

Jack Meng-Tat Chia is the Foo Hai Associate Professor in Buddhist Studies at the National University of Singaporewhere he serves as Assistant Dean of Research at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He is a historian of religion with a focus on Buddhism and Chinese religions in Southeast Asia. His first bookMonks in Motion: Buddhism and Modernity across the South China Sea (Oxford2020)was awarded the 2021 EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize and was shortlisted for the 2023 Friedrich Weller Prize. It has been translated into Chinese and Indonesian. His second bookDongnanya fayin: Xinjiapo fojiao yanjiu lunji 東南亞法音: 新加坡佛教研究論集 [Southeast Asia’s Dharma: Essays on Buddhism in Singapore] (Boyang2025)explores the historical evolution and contemporary transformations of Buddhism in Singapore and its regional connections. His edited volumeFigures of Buddhist Diplomacy in Modern Asia (Bloomsbury 2026)supported by the 2020 Social Science and Humanities Research Fellowship awarded by the Social Science Research CouncilSingaporetraces twenty-two monasticlayand political figures engaged in Buddhist diplomacy from the early twentieth century to the present. His children’s bookThe Journey of Ashin Jinarakkhitaillustrated by Ruizhong Choois a bilingual English–Indonesian story about Tee Boan Ana curious boy from Bogor who grows up to become Ashin Jinarakkhitathe monk who established the Buddhayana movement in Indonesia.

Chia is currently developing two book projects: Buddhayana: The Making of an Indonesian Buddhist Movementwhich offers the first comprehensive account of the rise and transformation of the Buddhayana movement in Indonesiaand Buddhist Diplomacy: A Global Historywhich traces the historical trajectories and transregional dimensions of Buddhist diplomacy from its earliest origins to the contemporary world.

Chia is the founding chair of the Buddhist Studies Group and the co-chair of the GL Louis Religious Pluralism Research Cluster at the Faculty of Arts and Social SciencesNUS. He co-chairs the Theravada Studies Group of the Association for Asian Studies and serves as a board member of the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions. He is an editor for the journals Asian Culture and the Journal of Global Buddhismand serves on the editorial boards of Contemporary BuddhismJournal of Chinese ReligionsMINDEN: Journal of History and ArchaeologyReading Religionthe Yin-Cheng Journal of Contemporary Buddhismand the book series “Chinese Buddhism and Asian Civilization” (Springer) and “Religion in Contemporary Asia” (De Gruyter). He is also a member of the Heritage Advisory Panel and the National Collection Advisory Panel of the National Heritage Board.

Born and raised in SingaporeChia earned his PhD in History from Cornell Universitywhere his dissertation received the Lauriston Sharp Prize. He holds a BA (Hons) and MA in History from the National University of Singaporeas well as a second MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard Universitywhere he was a Harvard-Yenching Fellow. Before joining NUShe was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

He is married to Dr. Ming-Yen Leean ethnomusicologist at the Nanyang Academy of Fine ArtsUniversity of the Arts Singapore.

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