Stefan Baums

Stefan Baums teaches Sanskrit, Prakrit and Pali language and literature, as well as South Asian Buddhism, at the Institute for Indian and Tibetan Studies of LMU Munich. He is lead researcher of the Buddhist Manuscripts from Gandhāra project at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Before joining LMU Munich, he held research and teaching positions at the University of Copenhagen, the University of Washington, the University of California, Berkeley, and Leiden University. He has also served as Visiting Professor of South Asian and Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

His research focuses on Buddhist philology and epigraphy, the beginnings of written Buddhist literature, the interaction between written and oral forms of textual transmission, the development of Buddhist hermeneutics, and the Gāndhārī language and its literature. His current work includes the decipherment and edition of Gāndhārī manuscripts containing early Buddhist poetry, commentaries, scholastic treatises and texts related to the Saṃgītisūtra.

He is co-editor, with Andrew Glass, of the Dictionary of Gāndhārī and editor of the Buddhist Manuscripts from Gandhāra and Gandhāran Texts and Traditions book series. He also serves as academic lead of the Research Environment for Ancient Documents software project and as epigraphist for the Italian Archaeological Mission in Pakistan.