2026 UKABS conference: Buddhism and Emotion

The programme has now been published and booking is open.

Date and venue:

24^th-26^th June 2026, New College, Mound Place, Edinburgh, UK (papers in the Martin Hall, refreshments in the Rainy Hall)

Booking information:

The registration fee covers refreshments (vegetarian lunches and teas/coffees) for all three days of the conference. We have kept it as low as possible for all attendees, and hence there is no reduced fee for students or other unwaged attendees. Nor are we able to offer any financial support for attendance, beyond the support for postgraduate and other early career speakers already provided by UKABS and IABS. Attendees must make their own arrangements for accommodation and travel, and we regret that we are not able to provide invitation letters or other visa application support for any attendees that are not listed as speakers on the programme. We do hope, however, to offer live streaming of at least some of the papers for free, to bring some of the benefits of the event to those unable to attend in person; further information about this will follow.

The conference fee is £85 (plus a small booking fee charged by EventBrite) with a reduced rate of £65 for current (2026) members of UKABS or IABS. You can follow the links to their websites if you are interested in joining and accessing this reduced rate. If you have queries about the status of your membership, or need to access your IABS membership number (which must be included in the conference booking), please contact the relevant organisation directly: ukabsmembership@gmail.com or Iabs.Treasurer@unil.ch.

This conference has a limited capacity (80 attendees) and so we recommend booking early.

The venue is an old building with some accessibility challenges. If you have accessibility needs, please let us know at the time of booking (or, if they arise later, by email) so that we can ensure we have the necessary support in place.

Booking link:

Eventbrite booking link for conference registration.

Travel and accommodation:

Please consider the impact of your journey on the environment and choose train or bus travel where possible. The conference venue is in central Edinburgh, just a few minutes walk from the main train station (Waverley), the Princes Street tram stop, and a range of bus stops. Driving in central Edinburgh is not recommended, and parking is expensive. Edinburgh airport is accessible by tram or bus, but it is a small airport with limited direct connections; an alternative, for international visitors, would be to fly to a larger regional airport such as Manchester (c. 4 hours by train from Edinburgh) or one of the London airports. The train from London to Edinburgh along the east coast is a very pleasant and scenic journey, taking a little over 4 hours, departing from London Kings Cross (very near the British Library). This train route also makes for a convenient connection for the Eurostar terminus at St Pancras, just across the street from Kings Cross. 

Edinburgh is a very popular tourist city and accommodation will be at a premium. We recommend you book early, using a travel site such as Trivago or Booking.com to compare options, or direct with a hotel chain. Because travel connections within the city are good, you can save money by staying a little out of the city centre and travelling in to the conference venue by bus (£2.20 flat fare for any journey). 

Visit Scotland site for Edinburgh.

Conference programme 

(draft, January 2026; details may change)

Wednesday 24 June 2026

from 10:30       Arrival and registration, with tea/coffee (Rainy Hall)

11:15-11:30      Welcome and opening announcements (Martin Hall)

11:30-12:30     Keynote lecture: “Approaching Emotions in Pali Buddhism”

Maria Heim, Amherst College 

12:30-13:30      Lunch

13:30-15:30    Panel 1: Early Indian Literature

13:30-14:00      “Udāyin - kāma personified” - Yael Shiri, University of Bristol

14:00-14:30      “Rāga for Liberation: The Outcaste Maiden Mātaṅgī/Caṇḍālī and Her Pursuit of Enlightenment in the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna” - Yadi Qu, University of Hamburg

14:30-15:00      “Our Boy, the Buddha: Intimacy and awe in the Pāli tradition” -Odeya Eshel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

15:00-15:30      “Writing Ajatasattu’s Story: Emotions We Understand” - Vanessa R. Sasson, Marianopolis College

15:30-16:00      Coffee break

16:00-17:30    Panel 2: Ethnographic Approaches to Buddhism and Emotion

16:00-16:30      “Interdependence, negative emotions and belonging in minority Buddhist communities” - Erica Baffelli and Jane Caple, University of Manchester 

16:30-17:00      “No Weeds, Only Flowers: Tending to Emotional Experiences within Caregiving Settings” - Monica Sanford, Harvard Divinity School

17:00-17.30      “Modelling More-than-Human Joy with Buddhist-Inspired Technologies” - Daniel White, University of Cambridge

Thursday 25 June 2026

09:00-10:30    Panel 3: Theoretical Approaches

09:00-09:30      “Secondary Vedana as Emotions & the Dynamics of Renunciant Feelings” - Bernat Font, Lanna Centre for Buddhist Studies

09:30-10:00      “Never Causing Surfeit: The Role of Spiritual Joy (nirāmisā vedanā) on the Buddhist Path” - Dhivan Thomas Jones, University of Chester

10:00-10:30      “Two Approaches to Meditation — and their Attendant Understandings of Perception and the  Emotions—in Aśvaghoṣa’s Saundarananda” - Roy Tzohar, Tel Aviv University

10:30-11:00      Coffee break

11:00-12:30     Panel 4: Human-Animal Relations

11:00-11:30      “The Revenge of the Cannibal Crabs: Bio-retribution and Emotion on an Indian Ocean Island” - Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, Kyoto University

11:30-12:00      “Fear and Disgust: Tools for Visualizing Moral Retribution in Human-Animal Relations” - Jennifer Eichman, Independent Scholar

12:00-12:30      “The Present Absence: Multispecies Memory and Emotion in a Himalayan Buddhist Community” - Rita Mancini, Ca' Foscari University of Venice and Italian School of Religious Studies, Rangjung Yeshe Institute

12:30-13:00      Lunch

13:00-14:00      UKABS AGM (Martin Hall)

All are welcome, though voting is restricted to UKABS members.

14:00-15:30     Panel 5: UKABS Postgraduate Panel

14:00-14:30      “The Representation of Buddhism in KS3 Religious Education in England” - Romana Meereis, University of Oxford

14:30-15:00      “The Conflicting Emotions of Conversion to Buddhism in Rāmacandra Bhārati’s Bhakti Śataka” - Shruthi Mathews, University of Oxford

15:00-15:30      “Memory, Loss and Emotion within Japanese Buddhist sculptures” - Elodie Pascal, University of Edinburgh

15:30-16:00      Coffee break

16:00-17:30    Panel 6: Buddhist Caretaking in Sickness, Death, and Afterlives

16:00-16:30      “Love After Loss: Caretaking Ghosts in Vietnam” - Sara Ann Swenson, Dartmouth College

16:30-17:00      “Redirecting Anxiety: The Affective Labour of Hòa Hảo Buddhist Volunteers in the Mekong Delta” - Nhung Lu Rots, University of Oslo

17:00-17:30      “Virtues as Emotional Practices: How Lay Buddhists in Myanmar Cultivate Feelings of Care through Funeral Encounters” - Mu-Lung Hsu, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Friday 26 June 2026

09:00-10:30     Panel 7: Emotion and Karma

09:00-09:30      “Love and Hate: Emotional entanglement in the multi-life story of the Buddha and Devadatta” - Naomi Appleton, University of Edinburgh

09:30-10:00      “Karmic Inversions in and of Hell: Reading the Gesar Epic as Religious Horror” - Natasha Mikles, Texas State University

10:00-10:30      “Feeling History, Building Heritage: Nostalgia and Community Construction at Yakushiji Temple, Nara, Japan” - Paride Stortini, Ghent University

10:30-11:00      Coffee break

11:00-12:30     Panel 8: Women’s Grief

11:00-11:30      “Mother-Grief (puttasoka) is a Barb for the Heart” - Kristin Scheible, Reed College

11:30-12:00      “Before and Beyond the Funeral: Grief and Succession Among Myanmar Buddhist Nuns” - MK Long, Dartmouth College

12:00-12:30      “From Tears to Tonsure: Widowhood, World-Disgust, and Women’s Paths to Renunciation in Late Imperial China” - Qijun Zheng, University of Cambridge and École Pratique des Hautes Études 

12:30-13:30      Lunch

13:30-15:30     Panel 9: Emotion and Crisis

13:30-14:00      “Propriety in Practice: Emotion and Community among South Korean Buddhist Military Chaplains” - Hyein Lee, Freie Universität Berlin

14:00-14:30      “Emotions in Crisis: Buddhist Reactions to the 1896-7 Indian Famine” - Frederik Schröer, Freie Universität Berlin

14:30-15:00      “Stigma, Shame, and Suicide in Contemporary Forest Monasticism” - Prabhath Sirisena, Independent Scholar

15:00-15:30      Coffee break

15:30-17:00    Panel 10: Emotion and the Body

15:30-16:00      “Laughter, tears, congealing life force and alimentary obstructions: external and internal physical manifestations of emotion in early Chinese Jataka material, with particular reference to the Liudu ji jing (LDJJ) 六度集經 (The Compendium Sutra on the Six Perfections)” - Janine Nicol, University of Edinburgh

16:00-16:30      “‘Their Sorrow and Joy was Gathered Together’: Affectivity and Ardor in Medieval Chinese Miracle Tales” - Julian Butterfield, Independent Scholar

16:30-17:00      “Evoking Emotions in the Viewing Body in Motion: Circumambulating George Keyt’s Life of the Buddha at Gotami Vihara, Sri Lanka” - Sujatha Arundathi Meegama, Courtauld Institute

17:00                Closing remarks and departure

Call for Papers:

PLEASE NOTE the call for papers is closed. The information here is just for reference.

UPDATE October 2025: This conference will now form a European regional meeting of the IABS as well as the annual UKABS conference. As such, members of both organisations (which are not formally related to one another) will be able to access the members' registration rate and financial support for ECRs.

The Edinburgh Centre for Buddhist Studies (ECBS) and the UK Association for Buddhist Studies (UKABS) invite abstracts for a conference on the theme of “Buddhism and Emotion” to be held in Edinburgh on 24^th-26^th June 2026. This will also form a European regional meeting of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS).

We are delighted to announce that Professor Maria Heim, author of so many definitive studies of emotion in South Asian Buddhist contexts, has agreed to be our keynote speaker. We welcome submissions on all aspects of the theme, and from all types of disciplinary approach, including (but not limited to) textual, visual, historical and ethnographic studies. 

The deadline for abstracts is the end of November 2025 and we expect to communicate outcomes by 19^th December 2025.

Attendees, including those presenting, will be expected to cover the costs of their attendance. We expect the registration fee (including vegetarian lunch and tea/coffee breaks) to be in the region of £80 with a reduced rate of around £60 for members of either UKABS or IABS; registration will open in January 2026. Attendees will need to make their own travel and accommodation arrangements.

We particularly welcome submissions from early career researchers (ECRs), including postgraduate students, and we will be including ECR development events at the conference. We have two types of financial support available:

1. A small number of late-stage, UK-based PhD students will have their costs of attendance covered by UKABS, and these presenters need not address the conference theme.
2. Up to five ECR presenters (including PhD students or those within five years of completion) from Europe who cannot access institutional funds will be awarded bursaries from IABS to cover their costs. Awardees must be members of IABS.

Presenters will be invited to submit their papers for a special issue of the peer-reviewed UKABS journal Buddhist Studies Review, though inclusion in the journal is neither a requirement for participation, nor guaranteed by acceptance for the conference.

Until the end of October, abstracts were accepted via email. Due to the volume of abstracts, from the end of October until the submission deadline, abstracts should be submitted via this Microsoft Form.

The form will ask for the following:

• Title of paper
• Abstract (up to 200 words)
• Name (including title), affiliation, and email address
• Interest in accessing financial support
• If postgraduate student: title of thesis, anticipated date of completion
• Indication of interest in submitting your paper for the special journal issue

Deadline for abstracts: 30th November 2025.

Organising committee:

Naomi Appleton, Erica Baffelli, Jan Nicol, and Upali Sraman

contact for queries: buddhist.studies@ed.ac.uk

Planning schedule:

Abstracts for proposed papers by 30th November 2025.

Paper selection confirmed December 2025.

Programme confirmed and registration opens January 2026.

Registration closes end May 2026