Bhadrajee Hewage

I am interested in Buddhism as a mobile intellectual, social, and political tradition whose modern history was shaped by connections across South Asia and beyond. My doctoral research focused on the Buddhist projects of Anagarika Dharmapala, Dharmanand Kosambi, and B. R. Ambedkar and asked how Buddhism offered South Asian thinkers a flexible framework for religious revival, social reform, and political thought. My past and present research explores the circulation of Buddhist knowledge, people, texts, and sacred geographies, and I seek to question simple narratives of a unified Buddhist modernity. I also remain interested in the broader intersection of Buddhist Studies, South Asian Studies, and History in its intellectual, global, political, cultural, social, and religious forms.

Publications:

• “Ceylonese Chronicles, Chinese Pilgrims, and the Nineteenth-Century Hierarchy of Texts in the Construction of Early Buddhist Geography,” Journal of Religious History (2026): 1-23.
• “Gandhi’s Buddhism: Assimilation, Theologisation, and Politicisation by a ‘Modern Buddha’,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3 (2026): 1-21.
• “Sovereignty, Circulation, and Argument in a Polycentric Buddhist World,” Global Intellectual History (2026): 1-19. 
• Review of Sonia Faleiro, The Robe and the Sword: How Buddhist Extremism Is Shaping Modern Asia. Journal of Global Buddhism 27, 1 (2026): 109-12.
• Review of Sunil Bastian, State Formation and Conflicts in Sri Lanka. Polity (2026): [1-6].
• “The Making and Unmaking of a Sri Lankan Buddha,” Histories 6,3 (2026): 42 [1-19].
• “Resilient Nationalism: Cheddi Jagan, the People’s Progressive Party, and the Limits of Race, Religion, and Anticommunism in British Guiana, 1953–1964,” Journal of Caribbean History 60, 1 (2026): 112-43.
• Review of Tamara Fernando, Shallow Blue Empire: A History of Pearl Diving in the Indian Ocean, 1850-1930. South Asian History and Culture (2026): 1-5.
• “From Inclination to Immersion: Reconstructing B.R. Ambedkar’s Long Road to Buddhism,” South Asian History and Culture (2026): 1-20.
• Review of Bardwell Smith, Precarious Balance: Sinhala Buddhism and the Forces of Pluralism. Journal of Global Buddhism 26, 1 (2025): 63-66.
• Review of Bob van der Linden, Romantic Nationalism in India: Cultivation of Culture and the Global Circulation of Ideas. Contemporary South Asia 33, 3 (2025): 528-29.
• “Venerating Bodh Gaya: The Return of the Ceylonese to Buddhism’s Holiest Site,” Religions 16, 9 (2025): 1105 [1-14] (part of a special issue on Pilgrimage: Diversity, Past and Present of Sacred Routes).
• Review of Annabella Pitkin, Renunciation and Longing: The Life of a Twentieth-Century Buddhist Saint. Contemporary Buddhism (2025): 1-3.
• “Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933),” St Andrew’s Encyclopaedia of Theology (2025): 1-33.
• Review of Gitanjali Surendran, Democracy’s Dhamma: Buddhism in the Making of Modern India, c. 1890–1956. Journal of Religious History 49, 2 (2025): 281-82.
• “The Caste Negotiations of Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) in Colonial Ceylon,” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion 6, 2 (2025): 257-76 (part of a special issue on Caste in Sri Lanka).
• Review of Alexander McKinley, Mountain at a Center of the World: Pilgrimage and Pluralism in Sri Lanka. Journal of Global Buddhism 25, 2 (2024): 220-23.
• Review of Neena Mahadev, Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka. Contemporary South Asia 32, 3 (2024): 452-53.
• Review of Douglas Ober, Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India. Journal of Religious History 48, 2 (2024): 254-56.
• Review of Justin Henry, Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below. Journal of Global Buddhism 24, 2 (2023): 114-17.
• Review of Shruti Kapila, Violent Fraternity: Indian Political Thought in the Global Age. South Asian History and Culture 14, 3 (2023): 371-73.
• Placing the Origins of the Buddha: An Island, Its People, and an Orientalist Odyssey (Cambridge Scholars, 2022).
• “The Proteas Plucked for a Lotus Land: Ceylon’s Boer Internment Experience, 1900-1902,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 50, 5 (2022): 915-43.
• “Polemical Publications and Socioeconomic Shake-Ups: Nineteenth-Century Ceylonese Buddhist Revivalism from Migettuwatte Gunananda to Anagarika Dharmapala,” Buddhist Studies Review 39, 1 (2022): 49-65.
• “Remodeled and Transformed: The Persistence of Brāhmanical Householder Ethics Given the Emergence of the Buddhist Tradition,” Noesis Review 8 (2021): 6-15.
• “The Lingering Influence of Revolutionary Political Discourse From the Civil War and Reconstruction Era,” Inquiries 13, 1 (2021): 1-13.
• Review of Richard Jaffe, Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism. Contemporary Buddhism 21, 1-2 (2020): 446-48.
• “Buddhism, Nationalism, and Communism: The Cold War Legacy of Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933),” Journal of Global Buddhism [in press].
• “Buddhism, Geopolitics, and Ideological Worlds: Reframing the Cold War Landscape,” Journal of Global Buddhism (with Mahinda Deegalle and Patcharaviral C. Schuessler) [in press].
• “Dambadiva, Jambudvīpa, and the Vernacular Re-Mapping of Buddhist Sacred Geography in Sri Lanka,” Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies [in press].
• “Decentring Global Health: Orientalism and the Case for Knowledge Pluralism,” Journal of Global Health (lead author with Bipin Adhikari, Bishal Joshi, Yogesh Poudyal, Shuma Banik, Haruhiko Ishioka, Junjie Ding, Sanjaya Acharya, and Shiva Raj Mishra) [in press].
• Review of Sujatha Meegama, Temples to the Buddha and the Gods: Transnational Drāviḍa Tradition of Architecture in Sri Lanka. Architectural History [in press]. 
• Review of Bruno Shirley, Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070–1215. Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies [in press].

Prizes and Funding:

• 2026- Junior Research Fellowship in History, St Hugh's College, Oxford. 
• 2026-2029 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND Postdoctoral Fellowship and Senior Research Fellowship, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, Finland [Declined]. 
• 2024-2025 Visiting Doctoral Research Fellowship (Finalist), Institute of Historical Research, London.
• 2024-2025 Beit Fund Scholarship, University of Oxford.
• 2024-2025 Designated Research Studentship, Faculty of History, Oxford. 
• 2021-2024 Clarendon Fund Scholarship, University of Oxford. 
• 2021-2024 Scatcherd European Scholarship, University of Oxford. 
• 2021-2024 Cooper-Max Beloff Scholarship, Trinity College Oxford.
• 2020-2021 Prize Research Studentship, Joint Centre for History and Economics, Cambridge

AB History, Princeton University
MPhil Modern South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge
DPhil History, University of Oxford