I received a B.A. from Stanford in Asian Languages (Chinese), an M.A. from UC Berkeley in East Asian Languages (classical Chinese), and a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University.
My research specialties and teaching interests include Warring States (5th-3rd c. B.C.E.) Chinese thought, religious studies (comparative religion, cognitive science and evolution of religion), cognitive linguistics (blending and conceptual metaphor theory), ethics (virtue ethics, moral psychology), evolutionary psychology, the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences, and the classical Chinese language.
I am currently finishing a trade book, contracted to Crown (Random House), with the working title, Trying Not to Try: Chinese Thought, the Embodied Mind, and the Paradox of Spontaneity, slated to be completed by August 2012; my other primary work in progress is an academic monograph with the working title Body and Mind in Early China: Beyond the Myth of Holism. Other recent publications include Creating Consilience: Integrating the Sciences and the Humanities (co-edited by myself and Prof. Mark Collard of SFU), and articles including a qualitative coding analysis of ancient Chinese texts published in Cognitive Science, a response to the situationist critique of virtue ethics published in Ethics, and the article "Metaphor and Meaning in Early China," which was recently awarded the 2012 Annual Best Essay award from the journal Dao.
I am also the Primary Investigator on a $3 million, 6-year SSHRC "Partnership Grant" just awarded to UBC-SFU's Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture (HECC) on the topic of "The Evolution of Religion and Morality," which will establish an interdisciplinary, international Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium (CERC), as well as a new program in Religious Studies at UBC. We hope this project will not only do quite a bit to illuminate the cultural evolutionary origins of religion and its link to human cooperation, but also change the way scholars approach problems in religious studies.
Please click here for my C.V. or here for my C.V. Summary.
