BMI Postdoctoral Fellowship

2026-27 BMI Postdoctoral Fellows

Harvard Divinity School welcomes one Ministry Studies Postdoctoral Fellow to Cambridge for 2026-28. 

Jieun Chang will be supporting the “Buddhist Teachers on Teaching” research project under the direction of the principal investigator, Dr. Monica Sanford. This project is an empirical study of Buddhist “ministry” (referred to as Dharma “teaching” colloquially among Buddhists) using a constructivist grounded theory approach, semi-structured interviews, and a public scholarship component resulting in a publishable podcast. In addition to this project, Dr. Chang will have the opportunity to continue her own comparative research between Buddhist and secular mindfulness education, developing effective mindfulness curricula for university students and share effective pedagogies with mindfulness educators. She earned her PhD in psychology from the University of Michigan, where she studied how people’s mindful personalities predict individual well-being, interpersonal well-being, and pro-environmental behaviors. She majored in materials science at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) in South Korea and worked at Samsung Electronics, developing renewable solar energy technology. Seeking a more fundamental solution to environmental problems, she spent two years traveling, exploring eco-village design, joining a sustainable development project in East Timor, and living in an indigenous community in Australia. While in India, she learned to meditate and came to believe that recognizing our interconnectedness with others and nature through mindfulness practice can shift people’s priorities from self-interest to the well-being of all beings—a perspective she considers vital to addressing environmental problems. This led her to focus on mindfulness education. She has also served as an environmental activist at Future Forest and as the education team leader at the Loving-kindness Meditation Association.