About Rima Vesely-Flad, Founding Director

Rima Vesely-Flad, PhD, is the Founding Director of the Initiative for Black Buddhist Studies and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Buddhist Studies.

She is the author of three books: 

  • The Fire Inside: The Dharma of James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (North Atlantic Books, 2026)
  • Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition: The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation (NYU Press, 2022)
  • Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives, and the Struggle for Justice (Fortress Press, 2017). 

Rima has twice been awarded a Department of State Fulbright Fellowship, as a post-graduate student in South Africa and as a faculty member in Ghana. She is also the recipient of grants from the Fetzer Institute, the Henry J. Luce Foundation, the Frederick Lenz Foundation, and the Crossroads Program.

For several years, she taught college-level courses at Sing Sing Prison, Sarah Lawrence College, and Warren Wilson College, as well as graduate classes at Union Theological Seminary.

She parents two artistic children and loves to hike and bike in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

You can follow her work on Instagram @blackbuddhiststudies or subscribe to the Black Buddhist Studies newsletter.

A public scholarship project created at the intersection of academic inquiry and community-based engagement.

Black Buddhist Studies aims to:

  • Offer community-based Buddhist Studies courses that center Black social movements, Black poets, and Black Buddhist writers
  • Create conversations amongst Buddhist practitioners and activists, as well as scholars of Buddhism, on how Buddhism can address racialized systemic harm in bureaucracies such as the U.S. penal system
  • Think through how Buddhist-inspired anti-caste movements influence anti-racism movements, as well as speak to discrimination based on poverty, gender, and sexuality in the U.S. context
  • Co-create a dialogue between Black Buddhists and Asian and Asian American Buddhists to address issues such as cultural appropriation, cultural adaptation, and internalized racism
  • Publish literature that can be used for furthering academic and community dialogue that incorporates the study of Buddhism and Black Studies.

Affiliations

Communications Director

Sandra Hannebohm, CEO of Twice As Good Media, partners with Black Buddhist Studies to amplify our public scholarship through comprehensive communications support including social media, design, website management, newsletters, podcasts, and course development.

Twice As Good Media is a digital media production company that offers sustainable digital media production practices and services for values-driven organizations, content creators and journalists.