DPhil student awarded prestigious ACLS Dissertation Fellowship

St Antony’s DPhil student Yui Cheong Richards Chang has been awarded a 2026 Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).

The fellowship is awarded to a select group of doctoral researchers from universities around the world and provides support for dissertation research and writing in the field of Buddhist Studies. In 2026, nine scholars were awarded fellowships of $40,000 to advance their research projects.

Richards Chang is reading for a DPhil in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at St Antony’s. His research examines the religious and cultural history of Kinnaur, a region in the Western Himalaya where Buddhist and Hindu traditions have long coexisted. Through a combination of historical and anthropological approaches, he explores processes of religious transition and identity formation in Indo-Tibetan borderland communities.

His ACLS-funded project investigates Kinnaur’s transition to Buddhism during the tenth and eleventh centuries, examining the networks of Buddhist translators who helped shape the region’s religious landscape and the ways local beliefs and traditions were incorporated into the spread of Buddhism.

Find out more about the The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation.