This website was first developed by Natasha Heller of the University of Virginia and Elena Valussi of Loyola University Chicago. It was created to facilitate greater representation of women in scholarly activities by providing a crowdsourced list of female scholars working in Asian Religions. We welcome contributions from anyone identifying as a woman, gender non-conforming, or non-binary. Independent scholars, PhD students, librarians, and museum curators are encouraged to add their names, and we understand both “Asia” and “religions” expansively. We are grateful for initial guidance from the Scholars’ Lab at UVA, and the inspiration and model of Sarah Bond’s Women of Ancient History and Kristian Petersen’s Women of Islamic Studies. This current website was restructured and maintained by Margaret Heller and Greer Martin at Loyola University Chicago. Andrea Wollein of the University of Toronto created and compiled the list of Online Resources.
Advisors include:
Natasha Heller, University of Virginia (co-founder)
Elena Valussi, Loyola University Chicago (co-founder)
Heather Blair, Indiana University
Frances Garrett, University of Toronto
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, Occidental College
Ute Huesken, Heidelberg University
Alicia Turner, York University
Header image of prayer wheels from Vanessa Sasson; detail of female donors suggested by Michelle Wang, from the Vajrabhairava mandala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; all other images from Creative Commons.
Publicity for wisar.info has been made possible by the generosity of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies and its director Frances Garrett.