Todd Klaiman

More about our Program and Research Coordinator

As a member of the CSRS team, I take seriously my role in promoting interdisciplinary research and public engagement on religion in society at the Centre. I draw on the full range of what I have learned through education, research, and lived experience in Asia and in Canada to facilitate this aim.

Before becoming a scholar of religion and early modern history in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, I explored Asia through various personal and professional pursuits. After receiving my BSc in biology from the University of British Columbia (2001), I lived in Beijing and Taiwan, where I studied Mandarin and taught English as a foreign language. During this time, I became deeply fascinated with the Chinese language and with local cultures and religions. These interests led me to spend four years living and training as a lay novitiate at Chung Tai Chan Buddhist Monastery in Taiwan. Although I ultimately chose not to be ordained, the lessons I learned at the monastery propelled me toward a deeper understanding of Chinese society and religiosity.

I honed my Chinese-language skills while completing my MA in Translation Studies at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei (2013). I later travelled extensively in East and Southeast Asia to conduct field research for my PhD dissertation, which focuses on the establishment and perpetuation of Chinese monastic Buddhism in Southeast Asia from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. I received my PhD from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2021). My training and extensive lived-experience in Asia have profoundly informed my work as a scholar and my appreciation for the interconnectedness of local, regional, and global religious phenomena.

I am currently a faculty member in Asian Studies Departments at both Langara College and Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I teach courses that focus on the histories, mythologies, and religions of China and Southeast Asia at both institutions. My teaching, like my research, explores the ways that movements of people, goods, ideas, practices, and symbols impact boundaries, belonging, and identity formation in communities across Asia.

Select Publications

2021. Stakeholder Relationships and the Production of Religious Space in Penang’s Chinese Community. Saeculum: 71: 241-260.

2021. Kek Lok Monastery and Translocal Religiosity: The Emergence of Chinese Monastic Buddhism in Southeast Asia, 1876-1974. Chinese University of Hong Kong.

2013. Chinese Diglossia and the (Un-) Translatability of Literary Linguistic Variation. New Voices in Translation Studies: 9: 1-19.

2010. Happiness and Suffering: Buddhist Teachings of Rinpoche Dorjee. By Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche. Glorious Jewel Publishing. (English)