How to Fund a PhD in Buddhist Studies — Fellowships and Scholarships

Very few people can afford to pay for five or six years of doctoral study themselves, and in Buddhist Studies nobody should have to. The money exists, but it comes from many different places: universities, national research councils, government programmes and a small group of foundations that care about the field. This guide sets out the main routes, explains who each one is for, and offers some practical advice on putting a funding plan together.

Checked October 2026. Funding programmes are paused, renamed and relaunched more often than you might expect, and several Buddhist Studies funders are changing their schemes right now. Use this as a map, not a rulebook, and always read the current call on the funder's own website before applying.

Start with the place itself: funded PhD positions

The single biggest source of PhD funding is the doctoral place itself. Where you apply shapes how you'll be funded, so it helps to understand how each system works before you draw up a shortlist (our PhD guide covers the programmes themselves).

Where	How funding usually works	Timing
United States and Canada	Most serious PhD programmes admit students with a multi-year package covering tuition and a living stipend, usually tied to some teaching or research assistance. Admission and funding are normally decided together.	Applications typically close in December or January for entry the following autumn.
United Kingdom	Funding is competitive and separate from admission. The main route in the humanities is the Arts and Humanities Research Council's new Doctoral Landscape Awards, run through partner universities, which cover fees and a stipend. International students can apply, but only a limited share of places is open to them, and the award may not cover the full international fee.	University deadlines for these awards tend to fall early in the calendar year. Check each university's page.
Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries	Many doctoral places are salaried jobs, often attached to a funded research project, and are advertised like any other post. Germany also has stipend-based routes through foundations and the DAAD, which mainly funds international researchers coming to Germany.	Positions are advertised all year round, whenever a project gets funded.
Japan	The Japanese government's MEXT scholarship supports international research students, usually starting as a non-degree research student before entering a degree programme.	Most applicants go through the Japanese embassy in their own country, with selection in the spring and summer of the year before arrival. Dates vary by country.

In the European systems especially, a funded position is often tied to a project someone else has designed. That's no bad thing: many excellent Buddhist Studies dissertations have come out of projects on manuscripts, canons, inscriptions or digital editions. We list these positions as we find them on our Buddhist Studies PhD, postdoc & fellowship positions page.

Buddhist Studies fellowships and scholarships

Alongside general university funding, a handful of programmes exist specifically for Buddhist Studies. Most of these support the research and writing stages of a PhD rather than paying for the whole degree.

The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies (ACLS)

The flagship award for doctoral students is the Ho Family Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Buddhist Studies, administered by the American Council of Learned Societies.

Who it's for: PhD students at accredited universities anywhere in the world who have finished coursework and exams and are ready to work full time on a dissertation that is mainly in Buddhist Studies. You can be of any citizenship, research anywhere, and the application is in English.
What it covers: A stipend for a year of full-time fieldwork, archival research or writing (US$40,000 in the current competition). It doesn't pay tuition, and you can't hold other employment during the award.
Timing: The 2026–27 competition closes on 28 October 2026, for fellowships starting in late summer 2027. If you miss it, look out for the next call on the ACLS site.

The same programme also runs early-career fellowships, public-impact grants and other competitions in Buddhist Studies, which are worth knowing about for the years after your PhD.

Khyentse Foundation

The Khyentse Foundation has long been one of the most generous supporters of students in the field, including through its PhD scholarships. As of March 2026, however, the foundation has paused its PhD scholarships and most of its individual grants while it reviews its programmes. Keep checking the site, and look for Khyentse-funded fellowships administered by partner universities. The University of Arizona's Center for Buddhist Studies, for example, has offered a Khyentse Foundation doctoral fellowship for its own PhD students.

Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies (Taiwan)

If you work on pre-modern Chinese Buddhism, the CHIBS Fellowship for Graduate Students is one of the few awards designed around the stages of a PhD. There are separate rounds for early exploratory research, post-qualifying dissertation research and dissertation writing, as well as an award for master's theses. Applications have been due once a year in early spring. Check the current call.

Glorisun and other university-based awards

The Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies links a group of universities in Europe, North America and Asia, including Oxford, Cambridge and Peking University. It funds fellowships, intensive programmes and visiting posts at its member institutions. Its own graduate fellowship is aimed at students affiliated with universities in mainland China and other Chinese-speaking regions.

Much Buddhist Studies money reaches students as named scholarships at individual universities, funded by Buddhist foundations and donors. Examples include Oxford's Glorisun Graduate Scholarship in Buddhist Studies for MPhil and DPhil students, which can be combined with other partial awards, as well as Lingyin- and Sheng Yen-funded graduate awards at several universities and the BDK Canada Graduate Scholarship, administered through McMaster University for graduate students across Canada. The Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (BDK), the Numata family's foundation, also funds Numata chairs and centres, including the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies in Hamburg. These centres are good places to ask about local doctoral support.

The lesson here: when you contact a department, always ask what internal funding exists for Buddhist Studies specifically. These awards are rarely advertised widely, and some get very few applicants.

Tibetan Buddhist Studies

The Tsadra Foundation has offered a dissertation fellowship for doctoral students in North America whose research involves substantial work with, and translation of, Tibetan Buddhist primary sources. We couldn't confirm a current call, so check the foundation's site to see whether it's running this year.

Funding for language study

Language preparation is where many Buddhist Studies students need help most, and where funding is currently least predictable.

American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS): The AIIS language programmes in India include Sanskrit and other South Asian languages in summer, semester and full-year formats, with competitive fellowships for some participants. Applications have closed in January for the following summer and academic year. Ask AIIS which languages currently carry fellowship support.
US federal programmes: Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships, the Critical Language Scholarship and Fulbright-Hays awards have long funded language study and dissertation research abroad for US citizens and permanent residents. Several of these have recently been cut back or put on hold, and at least one university has said FLAS will not continue beyond summer 2026 for now. Ask your university's fellowships office what is actually running before you build a plan around them.
Japan: For PhD candidates from North America and Europe, the JSPS short-term fellowships can fund a research stay hosted by a Japanese university, provided you're close to finishing your doctorate. The MEXT route above suits people who want to do a degree in Japan.
Intensive summer programmes: Many Buddhist Studies centres and institutes run summer schools in Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali or Classical Chinese, sometimes with tuition waivers or travel bursaries. These appear on our events and calls for papers page alongside conferences.

Practical tips

Apply for funding at the same time as admission. In the UK and much of Europe, studentship deadlines often come before the admission deadline you might expect, and a late application can mean you're admitted but unfunded. In North America, check whether submitting by an earlier deadline puts you in the running for extra fellowships.
Get your languages moving early. A strong language record makes you competitive for admission and for funding at the same time. A summer of intensive Tibetan or Sanskrit before you apply can make a real difference.
Write a proposal that a non-specialist can follow. Funding panels are often broader than your subfield. Say clearly what the question is, which sources you'll use, why it matters beyond your corner of Buddhist Studies, and why you are the right person to do it.
Talk to your future supervisor about money. Supervisors know which internal awards exist, which project grants are coming, and how past students were funded. Ask them directly.
Combine small grants. Travel grants, conference bursaries, library fellowships and short research awards add up. A few smaller grants on your CV also make larger applications more convincing.
Plan for the gaps. Many funding packages cover only part of a PhD, and few cover the writing-up period. Map your likely funding year by year and note where you'll need to apply for something new.
Keep records. Track every call, deadline and requirement in one place. Many awards run every year, so a call you missed this year tells you when to apply next year.

Find current openings

We collect funded PhD places, fellowships and postdocs from university and foundation sites every day. See our Buddhist Studies PhD, postdoc & fellowship positions, browse all Buddhist Studies jobs, or check events and calls for papers for summer schools and language programmes.

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