Department of History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts
Senior Teaching Fellow
Centre of Jaina Studies
Member, Centre of Jaina Studies
Centre of Buddhist Studies
Member
SOAS Centre of South East Asian Studies
Academic Staff, Centre of South East Asian Studies
The Southeast Asian Art Academic Programme
Communications and Outreach Manager, Scholarships Sub-board Member
- Name:
- Dr Peter D. Sharrock
- Email address:
- ps56@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- 020 7898 4462
- Fax:
- 020 7898 4699
- Address:
- SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Brunei Gallery
- Office No:
- B406
- Academic Support Hours:
- By email appointment
Biography
Peter Sharrock experienced the American war in Indochina for four years as the Reuters correspondent and discovered how, as the French said, Indochina ‘attaches to the skin’.
The war put the large Angkor temple complex out of reach and this was prolonged as Cambodia closed on itself and underwent the agony inflicted by Pol Pot. He finally reached Angkor in 1990, when landmines abounded and control of temples passed daily between the government and the Khmers Rouges.
His doctorate is on a new interpretation of the Buddhism and imperial politics of the greatest king of ancient Cambodia, Jayavarman VII.
He has developed a 'coherentist' approach to the history of Southeast Asia in which the very limited written sources – temple dedications inscribed in stone – are supplemented by trying to capture the religious and political messages embedded by kings in the decoration of state temples and in sacred icons and by monitoring the international flow of ideas across the states lying between the great centres of learning and technology in India and China.