Marta Sanvido is an Assistant Professor specializing in Japanese Buddhism and religions, with a focus on the medieval and early modern periods. Her research interests include Zen Buddhism, doctrinal exegesis, religious secrecy, narratives and hagiographies, interpretations of the body, manuscript culture, and Buddhist materiality. Sanvido is currently completing her first monograph, tentatively entitled Everyday Secrecy: Narratives, Communities, and Secret Manuscripts in Sōtō Zen Buddhism, based on three years of archival fieldwork in Japan. This study explores the relationship between secret knowledge and the everyday practices of local Buddhist communities, particularly within the Sōtō Zen tradition, from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth century.
Sanvido’s research has been supported by grants from The Japan Foundation (2018, 2024) and The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation (2024), among others.
Sanvido has published in both Japanese and English and her articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, History of Religions, The Eastern Buddhist, as well as other journals. She has also published and has forthcoming chapters on topics including soteriological understandings of the female corporeality, childbirth and motherhood, the significance of narratives in secret sources, and the historical and cultural evolution of kōan in Japan.
Her current projects include co-editing a double journal issue on secrecy in Japanese Buddhism and developing a second book-length study on the conceptualization of marginal bodies and disability in premodern Japanese Buddhism.
Sanvido received her Ph.D. from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Before joining Yale, she held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley (2021–2023), and the University of Hamburg (2023–2024).