Dr. Natalie Quli Named Yehan Numata Professorial Chair of Buddhist Studies

It was a full-circle moment for Dr. Natalie Quli when she was appointed the Institute of Buddhist Studies’ Yehan Numata Professorial Chair of Buddhist Studies in fall 2025.

“I see this Chair as a form of stewardship,” she said, “My primary goal is to ensure the longevity and rigor of the programs we’ve built and the vision we continue to cultivate. Beyond the traditional goals of teaching and research, the Numata Chair is an opportunity to act as a node in a larger global network. I represent the Institute of Buddhist Studies within the global community of Numata Chairs, ensuring that our unique perspective that bridges the academic with lived religion remains part of the larger conversation within Buddhist studies.”

The chair is named for Rev. Dr. Yehan Numata, who established the Yehan Numata Professorial Chair of Buddhist Studies Endowment Fund to support the IBS in 1986. He began publishing The Pacific World in 1925 as a way to foster international and intercultural understanding.

Numata established the Yehan Numata Professorial Chair of Buddhist Studies Endowment Fund to support the IBS. He pledged $30,000 for ten consecutive years.

“The chair was one of the first endowments set up by Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai which was established by the BDK’s founder, Yehan Numata,” IBS President Dr. Scott Mitchell said, “Numata was, since the early 20th century, deeply committed to spreading Buddhist teachings in the west, and the Numata Foundation has always seen supporting academic institutions as an important part of this more general mission.”

On June 30, 2009, Mr. Toshihide Numata, Kaichō of Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai, Japan pledged an additional $500,000 and formally named the professorial chair – the Yehan Numata Professorial Chair of Japanese Buddhist Studies.

“To be named the Numata Chair while serving as the Chief Editor of Pacific World feels like a full circle,” Dr. Quli said, “validating the work we do at IBS, particularly our commitment to making Buddhist scholarship both accessible and engaged with the world.”

Dr. Quli began her work at Pacific World in 2003 as a proofreader after returning to graduate school. She brought experience as an editor in the commercial publishing world, and said her work has provided an opportunity to engage with a diversity of Buddhist traditions and academic methodologies.

“We’ve often prioritized marginalized or new scholarship, and I hope it’s helped to push the field away from strictly philological approaches — though those continue to be important, of course — toward a multiplicity of methods and goals. It’s taught me that discussions in Buddhist studies benefit from including more voices,” she said.

Dr. Quli earned her MA and PhD from the Graduate Theological Union, after earning her BA from Humboldt State University in Anthropology and Religious Studies. She is the Senior Editor and Chair of the Editorial Committee for Pacific World Journal. She is also the program advisor for the Certificate in Theravāda Studies.

Dr. Quli’s appointment continues an important legacy of scholarship in the Numata Chair. She was a student of Dr. Richard Payne, who last held the chair. Payne served as Dean at the IBS from 1994-2016 and published widely on Japanese Buddhism, Esoteric Buddhism, secular Buddhism, psychology, and capitalism among other topics. He retired in 2023.

In her own research, Dr. Quli specializes in the social scientific study of contemporary Buddhism, with areas of expertise in Buddhist modernism, postcolonial theory, and contemporary Buddhist communities in North America, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia.

With her training in anthropology and religious studies, Dr. Quli explores contemporary articulations of power refracted through the lens of authenticity or purity, as well as the lived reality of Buddhist communities, drawing her to issues of modernity, colonialism, and identity.

“Whether I’m looking at how a Western convert finds their place within an international Vietnamese Buddhist community’s hierarchy, how an American Insight Buddhist views the jhanas, or how members of a Sri Lankan temple in California navigate issues around temple ownership, I’m always wondering: Who has the authority to define “authentic” Buddhism in a given context?” she said.