Claire Elliot is a doctoral student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, studying Modern Theravada Buddhism, primarily in Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Claire graduated with her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017, majoring in Religious Studies, and minoring in Architectural History. She then spent a year living in Southeast Asia, teaching English in a small elementary school in Na Hua Bo, Sakon Nakhon, Thailand, until she began working as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Pekan, Pehang, Malaysia. Claire graduated with her Masters in Asian studies from Cornell in 2020, where she studied Thai, Pali, and Sinhala, and won several FLAS grants. Her MA thesis focused on female monastic networks, localization, and lineage exchange. Claire then spent two years studying Thai as a Blakemore Freeman Fellow, and working on her French and Italian in Europe, before returning to UPenn for her Ph.D. in 2022.
BA, University of Pennsylvania
MA, Cornell University
Asian Religions