prof. dr. Bee Scherer

• American Academy of Religion | Atlanta | Steering committee Buddhist Constructive-Critical Reflection Unit | 2021-01-01 - present

Ancillary activities are updated daily

Prof. Dr. Bee Scherer (they/their) is chair of Buddhist Studies at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam (Netherlands) and the rector of the Dutch Buddhist Seminary that oversees the national Buddhist chaplaincy training programme. Before that Bee was Chair of Religious Studies and Gender Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University, in the U.K.

Scherer studied Religious Studies, Classics, Indo-European Studies, Indology, and Tibetology among other subjects in Bonn and Münster (Germany) and defended a PhD in 2002 on ancient myth and poetry at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands).

Additionally, Bee has specialised in areas of Critical Theory -Gender, Sexuality and Dis/ability and is engaged in intersectional Social Justice activism connected to the interdisciplinary Institute INCISE (http://incise.center) that Scherer founded in 2016; as the founder and facilitator of the conference network Queering Paradigms, Scherer edited a dozen books for the homonymous series (Oxford, Peter Lang).

Trained in the classical Buddhist languages and thought systems, Bee has published on a wide range of topics in Buddhist Studies including Early Buddhist literature; Mahāyāna Philosophy; Contemporary Thai Buddhism; Transnational Sinitic and Tibetan Buddhism and Engaged Buddhist Thought.

As non-binary trans Buddhist teacher in the Tibetan tradition, Bee has been active as a dharma teacher for two decades, leading retreats and giving lectures around the world.