Buddhism in the Nordic Countries

Jørn Borup is Associate Professor at the Department of the Study of Religion at Aarhus University. His research areas include Japanese Buddhism, Buddhism in the West, religious diversity, spirituality, migration and decolonisation. Since 2002, he has conducted research on Buddhism in Denmark for various projects at the Center for Contemporary Religion, Aarhus University. Besides articles for journals and publications in Danish, he is the author of Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism. Myōshinji, a Living Religion (2008) and Decolonising the Study of Religion: Who owns Buddhism? (Routledge 2023). Mitra Härkönen is an Academy Research Fellow with a master’s degree (M.Soc.Sc.) in social and cultural anthropology and a doctorate degree (Ph.D.) in the study of religions. She also has a degree in university pedagogy and previously worked as a university lecturer. Härkönen’s research interests range from Buddhist, Tibetan, and migration studies to gender studies. She conducted ethnographic fieldwork among Tibetan Buddhist nuns in India and the Tibetan regions under the Republic of China. She has also extensively studied Buddhism in Finland, conducted ethnographic fieldwork among Thai Buddhist women living in Finland, and done research on Thai berry-pickers. Her current research project examines the impact of Thai Buddhism on Finnish-Thai transnational families' decision-making and everyday life and practices. In addition to various articles, she has authored Power and Agency in the Lives of Contemporary Tibetan Nuns: An Intersectional Study (2023) and co-edited a book on Buddhism in Finland. Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway and author of many books and articles in journals and edited volumes on various aspects on religions of South Asia and in the South Asian diasporas. His main fields of research include South Asian transnational religions, religions and public space in South Asia and the South Asian diasporas, sacred geography and pilgrimage in South Asia, and Yoga history and theory. He is the author of four monographs, Prakṛti in Sāṃkhya-Yoga: Material Principle, Religious Experience, Ethical Implications (1999), Kapila: Founder of Sāṃkhya and Avatāra of Viṣṇu (2008), Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge 2013), and Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga (Routledge 2018), and is the editor or co-editor of numerous books, the latest of which are the Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (2021) and Hindu Diasporas (2023). Katarina Plank is Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Karlstad University, focusing on the lived religious experiences of migrants and on contemporary spirituality in Sweden. She has been conducting research in several projects funded by the Swedish Research Council: her postdoc project (2012-2014) explored Thai Buddhism in Sweden, and two other projects have focused on lived religion and social mobility among migrants (2020-2024) and how Covid affected migrant religious groups in Sweden (2024-2026). Plank led the project “The New Faces of the Folk Church” (funded by Riksbankens jubileumsfond 2021-2025). She has authored and edited several works, including Mindfulness: Tradition, tolkning och tillämpning (2014) Levd religion: det heliga i vardagen (2018) and Eastern Practices and Nordic Bodies (2023).