Hiroko Kawanami is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. She has co-edited Religions in the Modern World (2009, 2016) and Buddhism, International Relief Work, and Civil Society (2013), and is the author of Renunciation and Empowerment of Buddhist Nuns in Myanmar-Burma (2013). She is currently co-writing a book about the communal jurisdiction of non-ordained Buddhist nuns in the southern tradition.