I’m a historian of religion, gender, and politics in early second millennium Sri Lanka and beyond. I did my doctoral work in Ithaca, New York, and I’m currently based in Heidelberg, Germany.
My early work has mostly been concerned with ideas and practices of Buddhist sovereignty, which I’m convinced is far more nuanced, less stable and less androcentric than our standard accounts might suggest. My research explores a wider range of evidence—from royal inscriptions, to monastic disciplinary codes, to elaborate poems—in order to expose the cracks and fissures between competing visions of sovereignty. You can read more about this under the “writing” tab above.
My current project tracks Sinhala-language retellings of the Vessantara-jātaka, one of the most significant narratives in the Theravāda world, from the tenth through twentieth centuries. By exploring how this narrative has been retold in different periods, and in different literary genres, I believe that we can better understand shifting priorities in Buddhist aesthetics and ethics: how do you tell the story of the “perfectly generous” man? This work is being carried out with the generous support of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation (2026) and the British Academy (2027-2030).
You can contact me at brunomshirley [at] gmail [dot] com.
