Judith Nagata

Judith Nagata’s research interests cover Southeast Asia, where she has conducted extensive field and other research on Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia in its civil and political forms. In 2011, she was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow Asian Research Institute (ARI) in the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a Senior Visiting Research Fellow. Currently, she is following trends in engaged and humanistic Buddhism whose diasporic Buddhist organizations she continues to track in Taiwan, Southeast Asia and Canada. Much of her work focuses on religion, on the assumption that “religion” encompasses a wide range of ethnic, political, economic, business, social welfare, NGO and educational activities, media and cultural production, with spirituality being but one component. She has published extensively on regional and transnational religious and ethnic identity politics, focusing on their policy implications, for multiculturalism and for foreign relations.
Keywords: Religion; Buddhism; diasporic Buddhist organizations; Islam; regional and transnational religious and ethnic identity politics; Southeast Asia; Malaysia; Indonesia; Taiwan