About - Costantino MORETTI

Costantino Moretti 牟和諦 was appointed Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Professor in Chinese Medieval Buddhism at the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in December 2017.

His main fields of interest are Chinese Buddhist apocryphal scriptures, and Dunhuang manuscripts, mural paintings, and codicology.

Costantino Moretti graduated from Ca' Foscari University of Venice (Italy) with a BA in Chinese Language and Literature in 2001. In 2002-2003, he took up a scholarship to Beijing University to expand his knowledge of Chinese Buddhism, philology, and Dunhuang studies. He received an MA (2005) and a Ph.D (2010) in East-Asian Studies (Chinese Buddhism) from the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he went on to be appointed Research Associate (2010-2017). Since 2010 he has taken part in various research projects carried out by the East Asian Civilisations Research Centre (CRCAO). He directed (2016-2018) the research program Buddhist Religious Names and Titles in the Dunhuang Manuscripts (awarded by PSL University), a project aiming to publish an on-line repository of Buddhist official titles and patronymics found in the Dunhuang manuscripts.

Costantino Moretti is the author of Genèse d'un apocryphe bouddhique (2016, Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises), which focuses on a fifth century apocryphon that constitutes an important source for the study of popular Buddhism in Medieval China. He also collaborated on the edition of La Fabrique du Lisible (dir. J.-P. Drège, Collège de France, 2014). He is currently completing the first annotated French translation of the "Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism", which is part of the Dynastic History of the Wei Dynasty, and subediting entries concerning Medieval Chinese manuscripts from Dunhuang for the Encyclopaedia of Manuscript Cultures in Asia and Africa (EMCAA, Hamburg University).

Since 2010, he has been organizing regular scholarly events in Paris, involving Chinese research institutions. In particular, an annual cycle of conferences, organized with Professor Kuo Liying, as part of a collaborative program with the Dunhuang Academy, which brings French and Chinese scholars working on Medieval Buddhist studies together.

Since 2013, he has been teaching an annual introductory course on Chinese Buddhist manuscript tradition through the study of Dunhuang medieval documents at the EPHE to MA students and PhD candidates.