The Hong Kong Institute of Jingjiao Studies gratefully acknowledges scholars, researchers, and friends whose work, support, and collaboration have contributed to the advancement of Jingjiao and Syriac Christian studies in East Asia. The following individuals have participated in conversations, interviews, exchanges, and conferences connected with the mission of HKIJS.
TAM Tai Wai David 譚大衛
David (genealogical name: Shumo 樹模) is the founder and director of the Hong Kong Institute of Jingjiao Studies, and a researcher at the Institute for Ethics and Religions Studies, Tsinghua University. His work focuses especially on the textual, theological, and historical study of Jingjiao materials, with particular attention to manuscript transmission, philology, theology, and the Chinese literary and religious contexts in which these texts were received.
He studied theology, philosophy and city planning in Canada, worked as a city planner in Vancouver and Hong Kong, before pursuing Jingjiao study at Tsinghua University. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Religious Studies) from Tsinghua University. His doctoral research, supervised by Profs. Wang Xaiochao (adviser: Zhu Donghua), focused on the study of Yishen Lun, the longest of all “Jingjiao” manuscript. His current research concerns the Yishen Lun, the Jingjiao Stele, Dunhuang and Turfan Christian materials, manuscript authenticity, Chinese Christian terminology, and the broader history of the Church of the East in the Chinese world.
His publications include studies on Yishen Lun, the Jingjiao Stele, Tangchaodun, Jewish elements in Chinese Christian manuscripts, and the place of authorship of Yishen Lun. Recent works include “Authenticity Doubt on the Tomioka (Yishen Lun) Manuscript: A Discourse Analysis,” published in HTS Teologiese Studies 80, no. 3 (2024): 1–7; “The Parable of Wise and Foolish Builders in Yishen Lun and Rabbinic Literature,” published in Religions 15, no. 1 (2024): 107; “From ‘Here’ to Persia: The Place of Authorship of the Ancient Chinese Christian Manuscript Yishen Lun (Discourse on God),” published in Journal of Chinese Theology 8, no. 1 (2022): 9–34; and “A Perfect Church on Earth: The New Discovery of an Ancient Church Site in Tangchao Dun, China,” published in International Journal of Sino-Western Studies 21 (2021): 207–19, which received the Annual Excellent Article Award in 2021. Through HKIJS, he promotes research, translation, public scholarship, and international exchange in the study of ancient Chinese Christianity, Syriac traditions in East Asia, and related manuscript and archaeological materials.
Alexis Balmont (鮑樂民)
Alexis Balmont (鮑樂民) is a researcher at the Faculty of Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a scholar of Syriac Christianity and medieval Chinese Christianity, with particular expertise in Christian texts from the Tang period. He first studied engineering at École Centrale Paris, before pursuing religious studies at the Collège des Bernardins and biblical exegesis at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. Since 2019, he has lived in China, where he has studied Cantonese, Mandarin, and Chinese literature in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Beijing. Alexis is a co-founder of the Hong Kong Institute of Jingjiao Studies.
He holds a Ph.D. in Oriental Studies from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. His doctoral research, supervised by Pierre Marsone and Dietmar Winkler, focused on Tang-period Christian texts and was undertaken in connection with the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris (EPHE-PSL) and the Pontifical Oriental Institute. His current research concerns the religious manuscripts of Dunhuang and Turfan, the cultural and religious exchanges of the Silk Roads, the history of Christianity, Chinese religions, and the application of Digital Humanities methods to Chinese and Christian lexicography. His recent publications include Syriac Christians in Tang China: Chinese Texts and Theologies, published in Orientalia Patristica Oecumenica 23 by Lit Verlag, Zürich, in 2025; Textes chrétiens chinois du haut Moyen Âge, published as Sources Chrétiennes 658 in 2025; and Le christianisme chinois du haut Moyen Âge (2025). HKIJS is grateful for Alexis Balmont’s friendship, scholarly exchange, and participation in conversations connected with the Institute’s mission and the wider advancement of Jingjiao studies.
Tianyi Yuan (袁天一)
Tianyi Yuan (袁天一) is a graduate student in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities (MAPH) at the University of Chicago Division of the Humanities. He is also an MA alumnus of the University of Chicago Divinity School and an MDiv alumnus of Harvard Divinity School. In February 2026, he was admitted to Harvard University as a Ph.D. student in religion. Tianyi is a co-founder of the Hong Kong Institute of Jingjiao Studies.
His emerging research interests lie in comparative studies of Christianity, Buddhism, and Daoism, with particular attention to sacred space, religious geography, and cosmology. This direction is reflected in his HKIJS presentation, “Transforming Chinese Religious Geography: A Revisit of the Name Change from Persian Classic Religion to Daqin Luminous Religion,” which situates the Jingjiao Monument in dialogue with Buddhist and Daoist thought in eighth-century China. Through the lens of comparative religious geography, he reads the Monument not only as evidence of Christian presence, but also as a source for understanding how sacred geography, distant lands, and claims to legitimacy were reimagined within medieval China’s religious landscape. HKIJS is pleased to include Tianyi Yuan among its friends and collaborators, and is grateful for his participation in conversations connected with the Institute’s mission and the wider study of Christianity and religious traditions in the Chinese world.
Mark Dickens
Mark Dickens is a scholar of Syriac Christianity who specializes in the history of the Church of the East in Central Asia, with particular expertise in Christian manuscript fragments and inscriptions from Turfan and the wider Inner Asian world. He studied Applied Linguistics at the University of Victoria before pursuing Syriac Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he completed both an MPhil and a Ph.D. His doctoral dissertation, “Turkāyē: Turkic Peoples in Syriac Literature prior to the Seljüks,” examined the representation of Turkic peoples in Syriac literary traditions before the Seljük period. He has held academic positions and research appointments in Canada and the UK, including at SOAS, University of London and the University of Alberta.
His scholarship has been especially important for the study of Christian materials from Turfan. Through studies such as “Multilingual Christian Manuscripts from Turfan,” “Biblical Fragments from the Christian Library of Turfan,” “Scribal Practices in the Turfan Christian Community,” and his collaborative work on Christian calendrical and liturgical fragments, Dickens has helped illuminate the multilingual, liturgical, biblical, and scribal dimensions of East Syriac Christian life along the Silk Road network. His research also extends to Syriac gravestones and other inscriptions from Central Asia, as well as the transmission of Syriac traditions across Persian, Turkic, Sogdian, and Chinese cultural worlds. His collected volume, Echoes of a Forgotten Presence: Reconstructing the History of the Church of the East in Central Asia (2020), brings together a series of studies on the history of Christianity in Central Asia, including Turfan manuscript fragments, Semirechye gravestone inscriptions, and the wider historical networks of the Church of the East. More recent studies continue to explore the textual and historical legacy of Syriac Christianity across Inner Asia and China. HKIJS is pleased to include Mark Dickens among its friends and collaborators. His work has been of particular importance for understanding the relationship between Central Asia and Chinese Jingjiao materials, along with texts from later periods, particularly the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and it continues to provide an important foundation for the Institute’s interest in Syriac Christianity, manuscript culture, and the history of the Church of the East along the Silk Road network.
Jacob Chengwei Feng (馮成偉)
Jacob Chengwei Feng (馮成偉) is a theologian and scholar of Chinese Christianity, with particular interests in Jingjiao, constructive theology, science and religion, Daoism, and the history of the Church of the East in China. He holds a Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary and is a postdoctoral scholar at the same institution. His work brings early Chinese Christian materials into conversation with Chinese religious thought, especially questions of qi, spirit, creation, and contextual theology.
His major monograph, Science, Religion(s), and Spirit(s) in China: A Constructive Chinese Theology of Creation Based on Jingjiao’s Qi-tological Theology, with a New English Translation of the Entire Tang Jingjiao Corpus, was published by Brill in 2025. In this work, Feng reads Tang Jingjiao texts through the lenses of qi, metaphor, Daoist comparison, and theology–science–religion dialogue, proposing a constructive account of Jingjiao’s theology of creation. His article “The Wind of the Spirit Is Blowing East: Ancestors, Deities, and the Holy Spirit in the Earliest Mission to China” further explores how early Chinese Christian texts, especially Xuting Mishisuo jing, contextualized the Gospel within a world shaped by filial piety, ancestral reverence, and multiple spiritual powers. HKIJS is pleased to include Jacob Chengwei Feng among its friends and collaborators. His participation reflects the Institute’s interest in fostering conversations that connect Jingjiao studies with broader questions in Chinese theology, interreligious comparison, and the intellectual history of Christianity in the Chinese world.