PhD Candidate Sociocultural Anthropology
Matriculated September 2018
Research Interests
Japan, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia, ethics & morality, contemporary Buddhist movements, material culture, the ontological turn, anthropological theories
About
Handrio Nurhan is broadly interested in contemporary Buddhist movements in East and Southeast Asia. He is currently researching on Japan’s largest modernist Buddhist movement, Soka Gakkai, through the lens of ethics, materiality, and identity. Whereas the movement has been mostly studied through focusing on modernist elements such as beliefs and social actions, Handrio is interested in how the role of material practices including religiously powerful objects, profoundly affects the ethical constitution and identity of Soka Gakkai members in their day-to-day lives.
Handrio holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California and an M.A. in Philosophy from Texas Tech University in Lubbock. His Master’s thesis explores the intersection between contemporary moral philosophy and Buddhist ethics through constructing the Buddhist concept of upāya (Skillful Means) as a species of moral particularism.
Besides academic research, Handrio is an ardent fan of opera and a collector of operatic tenor voices from the earliest recordings of Enrico Caruso and Mario Lanza to Piotr Beczala and Juan Diego Flórez. Handrio is a tenor himself and can be heard at handrionurhan.com
Awards & Grants
- Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant. (Summer 2023).
- Long-term Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship (GRAF). (Fall 2022, Spring 2023).
- Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant. (2021).
- Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant. (2020).
- Junior Core Curriculum Writing Fellow. (AY 2019-2020).
- Department of Anthropology Summer Research Grant. (2019).
- Boston University Dean’s Fellowship. (Fall 2018, Spring 2019).
Publications
- forthcoming