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Dr. Schedneck has taught at ����ֱ�� since 2017. She teaches courses on Buddhism, Asian religions, and in the Life program. Before coming to ����ֱ��, she taught study abroad students as a lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for four years. She has been invited to give research presentations in Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Australia, and Malaysia. In 2020, Dr. Schedneck published a co-edited volume titled Buddhist Tourism in Asia and her second monograph, an ethnography of Buddhism in Chiang Mai, was published by the University of Washington Press in 2021. This book, Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand, was short-listed for the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2022. Her introduction to contemporary Buddhism in Southeast Asia, Living Theravada was published in 2023 with Shambhala Publications.

Her work broadly concerns contemporary Buddhism in Thailand, where she has lived and conducted research for over eight years. Further interests include global Buddhism, religions of Southeast Asia, gender in Asian religions, and religious tourism. Previous research has explored the modern vipassana meditation movement in Thailand’s international meditation centers and tourist encounters with Buddhism in Northern Thailand. She is currently completing a monograph on monastic aesthetics in modern Thailand and beginning a research project studying spirituality among Thai youth in the digital age.

Selected Publications

Books

Living Theravada: Demystifying the People, Places, and Practices of a Buddhist Tradition. Shambhala Publications, 2023.

Religious Tourism in Northern Thailand: Encounters with Buddhist Monks. University of Washington Press, 2021.
*Short-listed for the EuroSEAS Humanities Book Prize 2022

Buddhist Tourism in Asia, co-editor. University of Hawaii Press, in the series Contemporary Buddhism, 2020.

Thailand’s International Meditation Centers: Tourism and the Global Commodification of Religious Practices, Routledge, in the series Contemporary Asian Religions, 2015.

Recent Articles

“Visual Research, Digital Archives, and Focus Groups: Learning from Temple Communities in Thailand.” Fieldwork in Religion. 19 (2): 1-17, 2024.

“The Lay Buddhist Gaze and Femininity in Thai Male Monasticism.”&�Բ�����;Southeast Asia Research. 29(4): 417-433, 2022.

“Educational Philosophies and Celebrity Monks: Strategies for Communicating Buddhist Values to Thai Buddhist Youth.” Special Focus: Buddhism and Young People. Journal of Global Buddhism 22 (2): 273-289, 2021.

“Multiple Buddhisms in Ladakh: Strategic Secularities and Missionaries Fighting Decline.” Co-authored with Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg and Ann Gleig. Special Issue: Buddhism and Modernity in Asian Societies. Religions 12 (11): 1-19, 2021.

“Everyday Scandals: Regulating the Buddhist Monastic Body in Thai Media.”&�Բ�����;TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia. First View: 1-15, 2021.