Ph.D., Religion, Princeton University, 2025 M.A., Religion, Princeton University, 2021 M.Phil., Buddhist Studies, University of Oxford, 2017 B.A., History, University of North Florida, 2014
Biography
Kelly Carlton is the Sheng Yen Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Chinese Buddhism in the Department of Religion. Her research focuses on premodern Chinese Buddhism, with particular attention to histories of childhood from the fourth to tenth centuries CE. Drawing on a diverse range of textual, visual, and material sources, her work investigates Buddhist understandings of children’s religious capacities and moral status relative to age, gender, and familial obligation. Her current project examines ritual prescriptions for, and narrative accounts of, child mediums in esoteric Buddhist rituals between the seventh and tenth centuries. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS)/Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).