Dr Michael Kinadeter

Projects

Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ (2026–2032)

• 2026–2028: Principal Investigator of the project IRP08:
  The repurposing of letters and personal writings in medieval Japanese Buddhism: The case of Dōgetsu Shōnen and his disciples

Affiliated Projects

• 2023–2025: Postdoctoral Research Associate
  Zen Buddhist Genealogical Diagrams in Early Modern Japan: Representations of Religious Authority, Implementations in Social Practice, and Transmissions of Knowledge (part of DFG project ‘World Genealogy’)

Research Interests

• Premodern Japanese Religion
• East-Asian Buddhism, in particular Madhyamaka / Sanlun / Sanron
• Manuscript Studies
• Digital Humanities
• Genealogical Studies

CV

Michael Kinadeter graduated in Japanese Studies and obtained his PhD in Japanese Studies and Buddhist Studies (2023) at the University of Munich (LMU). His dissertation traces the reception of the Shíèrménlùn 十二門論 in Japan –one of the three eponymous texts of the Three Treatise 三論 tradition– on the basis of all extant commentarial and sub-commentarial manuscripts. From 2023 to 2025, he worked as Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Hamburg (UHH) on Zen Buddhist Genealogical Diagrams. In 2026, he joined the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, where he conducts research on the practice of re-using and re-purposing letters and other personal notes in the Buddhist monastic context during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods.