Visiting Fellows - 2009

Name                          : Prof Dr Paul Morris

Institution                   : Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Date of Visit(s)           : 27 April – 7 May 2009

E-mail                         : paul.morris@vuw.ac.nz

Brief Biodata

Paul Morris studied Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington under Professor Lloyd Geering, and at Lancaster University where he completed a PhD supervised by Professor Ninian Smart. Dr Morris taught at Lancaster during the 1980s and has held visiting positions, including Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations, Birmingham; Visiting Professor of Humanities, University of Queensland; and Visiting Professor of Religion, Boston University. Professor Morris is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association for the History of Religions and on the editorial/advisory boards of Numen, Journal of Beliefs and Values, Journal of Implicit Religion, Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies and the Numen Brill Studies in Religion series.

Name                           : Prof Dr Carolina López C
Institution                   : Tecnólogico de Monterrey University, Mexico
Date of Visit(s)           : 1 October 2009 – 19 August 2010
E-mail                         : lopez.c.carolina@gmail.com

Brief Biodata
Prof. Dr. Carolina Lopez is Professor of International Relations at Tecnólogico de Monterrey University in Chihuahua, México.  In the early Nineties, she founded the Center for Dialogue and Human Wellbeing at her university, which collaborates with like-minded academic and civil society organizations both locally and around the world. 

From Prof. Lopez’ work has emerged the Ideological-Structural Analysis — a theory which has been utilized in Latin America, Europe and Asia in situations of both conflict and collaboration among groups of dialogue. 

Prof. Carolina has 40 publications in the areas of intercivilisational and intercultural dialogue, human rights and wellbeing, international relations and politics.  In addition to their academic work, personnel at her Center for Dialogue and Human Wellbeing maintain columns in the popular press in México, in order to ensure the application of academic work at the level of civil society.  

At the informal level, Prof. López is involved in interfaith groups and activities, as part of a collective effort to help the “dialogical way of life” become more and more normative around the world.

Name                           : Prof Dr Fumiaki Taniguchi
Institution                   : KONAN University, Japan
Date of Visit(s)           : 5 – 20 August 2009
                                       12 – 19 May 2011
                                       28 August – 2 September 2012
E-mail                         : fumiaki@konan-u.ac.jp

Brief Biodata
Professor Fumiaki Taniguchi obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Economics at the KONAN University in year 1969 and later Master degree in Philosophy and Ethics at the OSAKA University in 1977. Prof. Fumiaki Taniguchi is a philosopher in the Department of Human Sciences, Faculty of Letters, at Konan University. He is the Director of the General Institute of the Environment at Konan University. He also serves as President of the Japan Academy for Health Behavioral Science, as Director of International Exchange Committee of the Japan Society of Environmental Education and an Editorial Team Member of the Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy, Canada. His academic background is in philosophy, ethics, environmental ethics and bioethics. He has worked on environmental education to specialize in the integral systems approach between environmental health and healthy life, also in the bridge between ethical norm and behavioral change. His books include The Current of Modern Philosophy (with Gunshi Satomi, Minerva Shobo, 1996) and Topology of Modern Thought (ed. G. Satomi, Horitsu Bunkasya, 1991). A parallel and long-standing interest is in establishing networks for glocal partners in the Asia-Pacific Region. He has organized and participated in many international conferences and seminars. He has been a Visiting Professor at Phranakhon Rajabhat University, Thailand (1997, 1999, 2001 and 2003), at University of Victoria, Canada (1997 and 2003) and at University of Malaya, Malaysia (2009). He also worked as Honorary Visiting Professor at Heibei University (1997-), Peking University (2000-), Peking University Resource College (2008-), China and an International Advisor, Advisory Panel of the University of Malaya Centre for Civilisational Dialogue (2011-2012).

Name                          : Prof Dr Shih-Chung Tristan Hsieh
Institution                   : National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Date of Visit(s)           : 1 November – 31 December 2010
E-mail                         : tristan@ntu.edu.tw

Brief Biodata
Prof. Dr. Shih-chung Tristan Hsieh is a well-known scholar in the field of Ethnicity, Interpretative Anthropology, Ethno-history, Anthropology of Tourism, Indigenous Culture of Taiwan, Tai Studies and Lao Studies. He holds a B.A. in History from Tunghai University, Taiwan , and a second on in Thai Study from University of Washington, Seattle; a M.A in Archaeology and Anthropology, National Taiwan University, and the other in Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle; a Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle. 

Prof. Hsieh has taught in the Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University for 20 years, he had been Department head twice, 1999-2002 and 2005-2008, and served as president of the Society of Chinese Ethnology from 2000 to 2002. Prof. Hsieh also was a visiting scholar at Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University during 1997-1998 academic year, and participated in Fulbright Scholarship in 2003-2004 as well. Prof. Hsieh at present is supervisor for 7 PhD students at NTU. He is busy for teaching but still continues his fieldwork in both Laos and Hokkaido. 

Prof. Hsieh has published quite a few academic works. The main contribution on Taiwan indigenous people include three books: Stigmatizing Identity: on Ethnic Change among Indigenous People in Taiwan (1987), Ethnic Tourism among the Taiwan Aborigines: Anthropological Interpretation of Contemporary ‘Mountain Culture’(1994), and Migration, Returning Home & Traditional Ritual: on Illisin Participation and Cultural Identity among Amis Urbanites in Northern Taiwan (2007). And those publications on Southeast Asia mostly by journal article are for instances “Bilateral Inheritance and Sexual Equality: on Cultural Base in Tai-Buddhist Communities in Mainland Southeast Asia”(2007), and “Water is ready for Coming to You: On Symbolism of Wetting Game in Laos” (2009), and a book entitled Tai-Lue: Ethnic Phenomena in Sipsong Panna (1993). He recently created a new field in Hokkaido, and already finished two papers on the Ainu People: “Internal Education as Imagined Entity: On Critical Gap between Ainu People and Culture” (2009), and “Failure in the Past and in the Present: on Collective Narratives among the Ainu on Ethnic Suffering” (2009). 

Prof. Hsieh in short is very interested in both ethnographic data and theoretical matter, he plans to spend years to integrate his works on Taiwan indigenous people, Lao/Tai-Lue culture, and the Ainu groups to develop an explanatory system for Asian ethnicity of the minority people in facing Nation-State.

Name                           : Dr Elisabet Sahtouris
Institution                   : World Wisdom Council USA
Date of Visit(s)           : 20 July – 1 August 2009
E-mail                         : elisabet@sahtouris.com

Brief Biodata
Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris is an internationally known evolution biologist, futurist, author, business consultant and speaker. Citizen of the USA and Greece, she lives in Spain, where she works with Mallorca Goes Green toward sustainable local economy. Fellow of the World Business Academy and member of the World Wisdom Council, her post-doctoral fellowship tenure was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; she taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts, was a UN Consultant on indigenous peoples, a science writer for the NOVA-HORIZON TV series, taught in a sustainable business MBA program and organized the Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium in 2008 and another in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. Her books include EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution, A Walk Through Time: from Stardust to Us and Biology Revisioned, w. Willis Harman.

Dr. Sahtouris ever updates her model for a living universe integrating physics, biology and spirituality. She sees solutions to our social and economic crises in the evolution of Earth's ecosystems and works passionately for the health and well-being of our global family. 

Her venues have included top government agencies in Australia, New Zealand, Brasil and the Netherlands, The World Bank, UN, UNESCO, EPA, Digital Earth Society, Boeing, Siemens, Tokyo Dome Stadium, Sao Paulo's leading business schools, State of the World Forums (NY & San Francisco), First Rand Bank Group S.Africa, World Parliament of Religions, and many more.