Simona Lazzerini

Simona Lazzerini is Assistant Professor of East Asian Religions at the College of the Holy Cross. She received her Ph.D in Religious Studies from Stanford University in 2023 and was the 2023–2025 Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral fellow in Japanese Buddhism at UC Berkeley. Before completing her Ph.D., Simona spent a year in Japan doing fieldwork in Nichiren temples with the generous support of BDK (Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai 仏教伝道協会). Simona’s fields of interest include demonology, female deities, East Asian visual and material culture, and the intersection between religion and popular culture. At UC Berkeley she will revise her dissertation for publication, and start a new project on Buddhist esoteric texts and rituals dealing with children’s illnesses and possession caused by malevolent beings.