· Anthropology of Religion & Secularism

· Ritual Theories, Chinese Buddhism, Temple Religions

· Materiality, Technology and Embodiment, Knowledge and Expertise

Yang Shen

Yang Shen is a cultural anthropologist of religion and secularism. She received her Ph.D. from Boston University in Anthropology in October 2019 and was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. She also taught at the Department of Asian Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a Frieberg-Glorisun Fellow at the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies.

Yang's work explores forms of Chinese secularism and how Chinese conceptions of religion and secularity transform global projects of modernity. Her first book manuscript, Sidestepping Secularism: Dynamics of Religion and Ordinary Life in Buddhist Temples in China examines how average Chinese temple-goers engage with Buddhist temple rituals. Her current project, Materializing Religious Mediation: Comparative Studies of the Social Efficacy of Lottery Divination, traces how a technical instrument is produced, circulated, embedded or denied in local (or de-localized) ritual structures in technology-advanced Asia. Through multi-site case studies and comparative-historical methods, the project casts a new light on religious specialization and secular entanglements in modern polities. Yang has also been engaged in a series of side projects examining the problem of knowledge and embodiment in syncretic Chinese spiritual traditions and their forms of tension under the condition of secularism. 

Education Background

2011-2019 Ph.D. in Anthropology, Boston University, United States

2007-2011 B. Laws in Sociology, Zhejiang University, China

Honors in the Humanities & Social Sciences, the Chu Kochen Honors College

Employment

2022-  Assistant Professor in Anthropology & One-Hundred-Talent Researcher, Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University, People’s Republic of China

2021-2022 Postdoctoral Fellow, the Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies & Lecturer, Department of Asian Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

2019-2021  Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Religious Diversity, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany