Professor Katja Triplett

Katja Triplett is Numata Chair of Japanese Buddhism at SOAS University of London.

Her doctorate in the Study of Religions is from Marburg University, where she also studied Japanese Linguistics and Social and Cultural Anthropology. Triplett held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions at SOAS University of London in 2004-2005. From 2007 to 2012 she was Associate Professor and curator of the Museum of Religions at Marburg University.

After holding a professorship in the Study of East Asian Religions at Göttingen University, she worked in senior research roles at the universities of Hannover and Leipzig before joining SOAS University of London in 2026.

Triplett was also Adjunct professor of the Study of Religions at Marburg University, where she taught courses about Japanese religions and Buddhism in Japan. She has collaborated with various universities in Japan, including Bukkyō University (Kyoto), Ōtani University (Kyoto) and Tenri University (Nara Prefecture).

Katja Triplett’s main fields of interest are religions in Japan, Japanese Buddhism, religion and translation, religion and medicine, as well as visual and material culture. One of her current projects focuses on Buddhists in contact with early Christian missionaries in Japan. She analyses expressions of epistemic competition between Japanese Buddhists and Catholic missionaries found in early modern Jesuit Japanese-language manuscripts and prints. Another of her fields of interest is the relationship between Buddhism and medicine, as well as Disability History and religions in premodern and early modern Japan. She has also conducted research on the contemporary social and medical engagement of Buddhist temples in Japan. Triplett has published widely on religions in Japan.