Monica Esposito


Monica Esposito was one of the world's foremost scholars of Chinese religion specializing in the history, texts, and practices of Daoism.

Biography

Monica Esposito was born in 1962 in the Italian city of Genoa. At the age of 4, she moved with her family to Padova. After graduating from High School she studied Chinese language and philosophy at the University of Venice, Fudan University in Shanghai, and the University of Gent in Belgium. After graduation with a thesis on Qigong in 1987, she continued her studies under the direction of Prof. Isabelle Robinet at the Department of Far Eastern Studies of the University of Paris. After obtaining the Diploma of Advanced Studies on texts of the Daoist canon in 1988, she returned to Shanghai and studied at the Academy of Social Science of Shanghai under the direction of Prof. Chen Yaoting. Her graduate studies ended in 1993 with a summa cum laude Ph.D. in Far Eastern Studies; thesis The Dragon Gate - The Longmen school of Mount Jin'gai and its alchemical practices according to the Daozang xubian .
During several stays in China and Tibet, Dr. Esposito conducted extensive field work on Qigong, Taiji, Daoist and Buddhist practices in China.
After post-doctoral studies at the Department of Indological and Far-Eastern Studies of the University of Venice, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at Kansai University in Osaka, she established permanent residence in Kyoto in 1998 and married Urs App. Between 1998 and 2003 she concentrated on field studies in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and continental China leading to the production, together with her husband, of several highly acclaimed video productions about Far Eastern religions.
After being elected Associate Professor at Kyoto University's Institute for Research in Humanistic Studies in 2003, Dr. Esposito continued her research on Daoist texts of the Ming and Qing periods. She conceived and directed the Daozang Jiyao research project, an international research project with over sixty scientific collaborators on the most important Daoist text collection of the Qing period. For portions of this large project, which began in 2006, Dr. Esposito obtained important grants from the Chiang Ching-kuo foundation and from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. The main institutions collaborating in this ongoing project are:
Focuses of Monica Esposito's research were Ming and Qing Daoism, inner alchemy, the interaction between Daoism and Tantrism, Buddhism of the late imperial period, and Tibetan Buddhism. She died of a pulmonary embolism on March 10, 2011 in Kyoto, Japan.

Professional memberships and functions