Barbara HENDRISCHKE

Senior Research Fellow (2021–2024)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since October 2021, Barbara Hendrischke is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna. She did undergraduate studies in classical philology and philosophy at the University of Tübingen and holds an M.A. (1968) and a Ph.D. (1971) in sinology and philosophy from the University of Würzburg. She was a research fellow at the Institute of Humanistic Studies at the University of Kyōto (1969–1970) where she studied the early philosophical text Wénzǐ and is the author of Wen-tzu. Ein Beitrag zur Problematik und zum Verständnis eines taoistischen Textes (Peter Lang, 1974). She received a grant from the German Research Foundation (1972–1974) to study the Daoist religious text Tàipíng jīng and returned to the Institute of Humanistic Studies in Kyōto for research on this text. In 1975, she published Taiping jing: The Origin and Transmission of the "Scripture on General Welfare". The History of an Unofficial Text (Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Natur und Völkerkunde Ostasiens). She was a DAAD student at the Language Institute (Yŭyán Xuéyuàn) in Beijing (1974–1975) and spent time in Beijing freelancing (1979–1982), which resulted in papers like "Chinese Research into Daoism after the Cultural Revolution" (Asiatische Studien, 1984). She was a fellow of the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies of the Australian National University (2002–2004), visiting senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales (2005–2011), visiting research fellow of Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissensenschaftliche Forschung (IKGF) at the University of Erlangen (2012–2014), and an honorary member of the China Studies Centre of the University of Sydney (2012–2021). She has taught at the Chinese Department of Macquarie University (1989–1990), the Economic History and History Departments of the University of New South Wales (1991–1994 and 2002–2004), the Institute of Asian Languages and Societies of the University of Melbourne (1996–1999), and the School of History and Philosophy of the University of New South Wales (2008–2011). She is the author of The Scripture on Great Peace (University of California Press; 2006; paperback, 2015) and Daoist Perspectives on Knowing the Future (Harrassowitz, 2017). At present, her interest is still in Daoist materials from the beginnings of the religion, in particular the Tàipíng jīng and the Bàopǔzǐ.