Dr Woramat Malasart

BSc (Chulalongkorn University), DipGrad, MA, PhD(Otago)

Teaching Fellow
Richardson 5C24, 5th Floor, Richardson Central Tower
Email malwo996@student.otago.ac.nz

After completing his bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand in 2015, Woramat redirected his attention to studying of Buddhism. He is interested in many aspects of Buddhism. However, his particular passion is for the study of Buddhist manuscripts from Southeast Asia, especially those written in Khom, Thai, and Dhamma scripts. He is fascinated by textual and paratextual elements in manuscripts and how they can reflect a broad range of information such as historical affairs, philosophical ideas, sciences, medicine, religious practices, etc. He also seeks to understand the ethnography of texts, looking at how Buddhist texts are contextualised during rituals and other practices.

Woramat completed his MA (with distinction) in Buddhist Studies from the University of Otago in 2019. His MA thesis "The Dhammakāyānussati-kathā: A Trace of "Siam's Borān Buddhism" from the Reign of Rāmā I (1782-1809 CE)" was awarded a grade of A+ by two external examiners. In 2020, he received the ENITAS scholarship from the Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, to prepare a manuscript for publication and in 2021, part of his MA thesis was published in The Journal of Siam Society, one of the most distinguished journals on topics connected to Southeast Asia.

Woramat was awarded a University of Otago Doctoral Scholarship in 2020 for his PhD thesis titled "The Dhammakāya Lemmata from Core Text to Commentary: Buddhist Practices, Manuscript Transmission and Textual Formation in Traditional Buddhism in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia," under the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Guthrie, Dr. Trent Walker, and Professor Will Sweetman.

So far, Woramat has contributed four public talks, five conference papers, three oral presentations, and one academic poster to academic and public areas in Thailand, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, and India. His poster "Duang That 'Sphere of Elements' and Its Significance for Siam Traditional (Boran) Meditation," won the first prize for the academic poster presentation at the 3rd Seoul International Meditation Expo 2022, Korea. In addition to participating in several conferences, he was on a committee that organised a seminar on "Peace and Early Buddhism" at the University of Otago in 2019.

Papers taught in 2024

• RELS 227 / RELS 327 Buddhist Thought

Select publications

"Dhamma Puzzles from the Buddha Image Construction in Lanna: An Image of the Buddha or Dhammakāyaā," Journal of Thai Studies 18, no. 2 (2022): 57-80.

"Making the Buddha Present: The Dhammakāya Text Genre in Cambodia and Northern Thailand," DIRI Journal 3, no. 1 (2019): 110-19.