Oren Hanner is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Duke Kunshan University. His research focuses on the history of Buddhist philosophy in India, ethics, philosophy of action, and cross-cultural philosophy. His recent work deals with questions related to the meaning of life, joint moral agency, and justice, as they can be understood from a Buddhist perspective. Hanner is the editor of Buddhism and Scepticism: Historical, Philosophical, and Comparative Perspectives (Projekt Verlag, 2020) and has published articles in various journals, including Sophia, Comparative Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, and Mindfulness. From 2019 to 2023, he was the book review editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an M.A. in philosophy from Tel-Aviv University, and a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Hamburg. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at New York University, Abu Dhabi, and the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ben Van Overmeire is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at Duke Kunshan University. His research focuses on Zen Buddhism, with particular emphasis on kōan practice, Buddhist autobiography, and the literary forms through which religious experience is narrated. His work explores the intersections of religion and literature, Buddhist modernism, and the religious imagination in contemporary culture, including science fiction, cosmology, and outer space exploration. He is especially interested in how Buddhist thought adapts to modern scientific and technological worldviews in China, Japan, and North America. Van Overmeire is the author of American Koan: Zen and Self in Autobiographical Literature (University of Virginia Press, 2024) and co-editor (with James Miller) of Chinese Religions in Five Minutes (forthcoming, Equinox). Van Overmeire received a B.A. and an M.A. in Germanic Languages and Literatures from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, an M.A. in American Studies from the University of Antwerp, and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He earned his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, San Diego. Before joining Duke Kunshan University, he served as a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University (Belgium).
Paolo Visigalli is a scholar specializing in the intellectual and religious history of South and East Asia, with a focus on ancient Indian philosophy, Vedic and Buddhist hermeneutics, and the trans-regional migration of ideas. With a background in comparative religious studies and advanced training in Sanskrit, Pāli, and Classical Chinese, his research explores the intersection of linguistic ideologies and Eurasian intellectual history. He is currently an Associate Professor of South Asian and World History at Shanghai Normal University and holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge. His research has been featured in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Indian Philosophy, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS), Philosophy East and West, and Archivio Storico Italiano. Additionally, he has contributed to high-profile edited collections on the history of science (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science) and linguistics, as well as the intersection of language and religion.
