Oliver Freiberger

Interests

Biography

Oliver Freiberger is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Asian Studies.  He completed his Ph.D. in Indology, with concentrations in History of Religions and Tibetology, at the University of Göttingen in 1999 and received his Habilitation Degree in Religious Studies from the University of Bayreuth in 2009.

Prof. Freiberger's primary interests lie in the history of early Buddhism in India, asceticism, and comparison in the study of religion.  He has edited a volume on Asceticism and Its Critics and recently published a monograph in German comparing ascetic beliefs and practices in India and early Christianity (English: The Asceticism Discourse in the History of Religion: A Comparative Study of Brahmanical and Early Christian Texts).