Professor Martin Seeger

From 1997–2000 Professor Seeger was ordained as a Theravada Buddhist monk in northern Thailand. During this time he studied the Thai language, Thai history and culture, Pali chanting, and meditation. At the same time a number of Thai Buddhist monks taught him Theravada Buddhist doctrine, using the textbooks of the traditional clerical examination for Thai Buddhist monks (Nak Tham) and numerous other important texts of the Thai Theravada tradition. From 2000–2004 he studied Thai Buddhism, Thai history and culture, Pali language and early Indian Buddhism at the University of Hamburg, predominantly with his teachers and MA/PhD supervisors Professor Barend Terwiel and Professor Lambert Schmithausen.

He has done research on Thai Buddhism and environmentalism, Human Rights in Thai Theravada Buddhism, development monks in the northeastern region of Thailand, and teaching Thai as a foreign language. In his book "Gender and the Path to Awakening: Hidden Histories of Nuns in Modern Thai Buddhism," he investigates understandings of female sainthood in Thai Buddhism, its expressions in material culture, and the importance of orality and memory in Thai Buddhism.