Michael Willis is an

Indologist Indology, also known as South Asian studies, is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent, and as such is a subset of Asian studies. The term ''Indology'' (in German, ''Indologie'') is ...

and

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

based in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Born in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

and raised in

Kuwait Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the nort ...

and

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

, Willis took his B.A. degree at the

University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary insti ...

where he studied with Siri Gunasinghe and

Alan Gowans Alan Gowans (November 30, 1923 – August 19, 2001) was an art historian and university academic, educated at the University of Toronto and Princeton University. A charismatic teacher and prolific author, his academic specialty was North American ...

. Travelling to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

, he studied with

J. A. B. van Buitenen Johannes Adrianus Bernardus van Buitenen (21 May 1928 – 21 September 1979) was a Dutch Indologist at the University of Chicago where he was the George V. Bobrinskoy Professor of Sanskrit in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizat ...

and Pramod Chandra, receiving his doctoral degree in 1988 after periods in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ge ...

. He joined the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in 1994 after teaching at SUNY New Paltz. He was the curator of the early south Asian and Himalayan collections in the Department of Asia at the museum from 1994 until 2014 at which time he became Corresponding Principal Investigator of ''Beyond Boundaries'', a research project funded by the European Research Council. That project generated a number of outputs, including The South Asia Inscriptions Database. The project ended in 2020. Willis's main research interest has been the cultural, political and religious history of India from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries. He has published on the inscriptions of central India and its early temple architecture. After that, Willis turned his attention to the Gupta dynasty, publishing a monograph on Hindu ritual and the development of temples as land-holding institutions, ''

The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual ''The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the Establishment of the Gods'' is an archaeological study focusing on the early development of Hinduism within the Gupta Empire between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. Written by the British archaeolog ...

'' (2009). Willis has also researched the Buddhist history of India and produced a catalogue of reliquaries and related materials in the British Museum and

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. Concurrently Willis developed an interest in Tibet and published a popular book on the subject. More recently he has been involved in a study of the Testament of Ba, producing a text and translation of the earliest surviving manuscript.Available in Lewis Doney, ed. ''Bringing Buddhism to Tibet'' (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), available online at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110715309.

References

External links

*Royal Asiatic Societ

*ORCI

*SIDDHA

{{DEFAULTSORT:Willis, Michael D. British Indologists Living people Writers from Vancouver University of Victoria alumni University of Chicago alumni English Indologists Historians of Indian art Year of birth missing (living people)