Michael Willis is an
Indologist and
historian based in
London,
England.
Born in
Vancouver,
British Columbia and raised in
Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia, Willis took his B.A. degree at the
University of Victoria where he studied with
Siri Gunasinghe and
Alan Gowans. Travelling to the
University of Chicago, he studied with
J. A. B. van Buitenen and Pramod Chandra, receiving his doctoral degree in 1988 after periods in
India and
Cyprus. He joined the
British Museum in 1994 after teaching at
SUNY New Paltz
The State University of New York at New Paltz (SUNY New Paltz or New Paltz) is a public university in New Paltz, New York. It traces its origins to the New Paltz Classical School, a secondary institution founded in 1828 and reorganized as an ac ...
. 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
The European Research Council (ERC) is a public body for funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU). Established by the European Commission in 2007, the ERC is composed of an independent Scientific ...
. 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
The Gupta Empire was an Outline of ancient India, ancient Indian empire which existed from the early 4th century CE to late 6th century CE. At its zenith, from approximately 319 to 467 CE, it covered much of the Indian subcontinent. This period ...
, publishing a monograph on Hindu ritual and the development of temples as land-holding institutions, ''
The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual'' (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. 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)