Beiyin Deng

Beiyin Deng is currently a Ph.D. student in Religious Studies at Arizona State University pursuing research interests in contemporary Buddhist material culture, state-religion relationship, and religion in public diplomacy in Southeast Asian and Chinese traditions. She has conducted field research on marble Buddhist image carving in Sagyin and Mandalay, Myanmar, and Ruili, China, since Dec 2017. Her dissertation project investigates the cultural, religious, and political factors that condition and influence the development of the transnational trade of marble Buddhist images across the Sino-Burmese border since the late 1980s. It aims to illuminate how the circulation of Buddhist icons connects the past and the present in both states and constantly shapes and reshapes the ethnic and religious boundaries between two communities that are usually categorized as “Theravada” and “Mahayana.”