Introduction

My academic journey began in Bratislava, Slovakia, at the Department of Languages and Cultures of East Asia, where I majored in Japanese Language and Intercultural Communication. During my studies, I was awarded a prestigious state scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbukagakushō), which enabled me to spend a year studying at the Ōsaka University of Foreign Studies (Ōsaka gaikokugo daigaku). There, I immersed myself fully in the study of Japanese language, history, and culture. Subsequently, I pursued an M.A. program in Japanese Religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, building upon my research on the earliest history of Zen schools in Japan and the interconnection between the Rinzai school and the samurai class.

After completing my M.A. studies in both Bratislava and London, I embarked on a Ph.D. program at the Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. In 2012, I successfully defended my dissertation titled "Politization of Kami and Emergence of Narrative Ideology in Ancient Japan: Earliest worship of Japanese deities and their Reflection in the Chronicles."

Continuing my academic pursuits, I participated in the Summer School on Chinese Buddhist manuscripts at the University of Cambridge in 2018 and the Summer School in Classical Chinese at Ca'Foscari University in Venice in collaboration with Princeton University in 2022.

Research

My research interests focus on general Buddhist thought, Japanese Buddhism, and Japanese religious history. Specifically, I explore topics such as Zen Buddhism, early Japanese religious history, Japanese Buddhist art, architecture, iconography, and liturgy. My current research centers on translating and analyzing works of the Japanese Zen master Dōgen (13th century), particularly his Chinese and Sino-Japanese texts.

Other activities