Education:

Ph.D. University of Virginia, Tibetan Buddhism and Sino-Tibetan Religions

M.T.S. Harvard Divinity School, Buddhist Studies

B.A. Davidson College, Religious Studies (High Honors), Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa

Leadership:

Dr. Kilby serves as the Associate Head of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at JMU, overseeing the curriculum in Global Religions and Cultures. She leads the Welcome Corps on Campus program at JMU, an innovative public-private partnership administered by the U.S. Department of State that matches academically qualified refugee students to U.S. universities as a complementary resettlement pathway. Dr. Kilby co-chairs a new university-wide Committee on Refugee Partnerships, aiming to expand JMU's engagement with displaced students and scholars abroad as well as in our local community of Harrisonburg. Finally, she serves on the leadership team of JMU's Every Campus a Refuge program, which provides service-learning and internship opportunities for JMU students to support refugee resettlement in partnership with our local resettlement agency.

Research:

Dr. Kilby is a specialist in Buddhist Studies, focusing on religion's intersection with conflict, displacement, humanitarianism, and human security. Her publications, spanning academic and policy-oriented work, are listed below. She was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and has won grants for research, langauge study, and non-profit partnerships. She has consulted extensively for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) initiative on "The Interface Between Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law: Reducing Suffering During Armed Conflict" and chaired a working group on internal displacement for the ICRC Office of Global Affairs, Asia Region. 

Teaching:

Dr. Kilby teaches courses in Buddhist studies, religions of the world, refugee studies, and religion and international humanitarian law. She is a faculty partner in the U.S. Department of State Diplomacy Lab, which solicits undergraduate research in service of Department of State needs. Her students are currently researching how Buddhist institutions can mitigate risk for environmental defenders in southeast Asia.

Publications:

Buddhism and Displacement: A Critical Analysis at the Intersection of Religion, Humanitarianism, and Law. Research monograph in progress, under contract with Routledge. Forthcoming 2025.

"Buddhism and Migration." Oxford Handbook on Religion and Contemporary Migration. Forthcoming Dec. 2024.

"Dispatches to the Spirit World: Orality, Literacy, and Power in Tibetan Letters to Gods, Demons, and Oracles." Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines. Forthcoming 2024.

"Call For a Buddhism-Inspired Asian Regional Compact on Internal Displacement.” 2024. International Relations.

"The World Is Without Shelter, Without Protector: Buddhism, the Protection of Displaced People, and International Humanitarian Law." 2023. In Religion, Religious Groups, and Migration, ed. Deniz Cosan Eke and Eric Trinka. London: Transnational Press.

"Legal Reasoning about Displacement and Responsibility: A Dialogue Between the Buddhist Monastic Discipline and International Humanitarian Law." 2023. Journal of Buddhist Ethics 30: 231-254. https://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2023/ 10/Kilby_23_FD-final.pdf

Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law. 2023. Ed. Andrew Bartles-Smith, Kate Crosby, Peter Harvey, Asanga Tilakaratne, Daniel Ratheiser, Noel Maurer Trew, Stefania Travagnin, Elizabeth J. Harris, Venerable Mahinda Deegalle, and Christina A. Kilby. New York: Routledge.

"The Poetry of Being Human: Toward a Tibetan Wisdom Literature." 2023. In Living Treasure: Tibetan and Buddhist Studies in Honor of Janet Gyatso. Ed. Holly Gayley and Andrew Quintman. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.

"Pakpa's Epistolary Manual." 2023. In Histories of Tibet: Essays in Honor of Leonard W. J. van der Kuijp. Ed. Kurtis R. Schaeffer, Jue Liang, and William A. McGrath. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications.

"Buddhism, Immigrants, and Refugees." Oxford Bibliographies in Buddhism. 2022. DOI: https://www.jmu.edu/philrel/people/kilby-christie.shtml/10.1093/OBO/9780195393521-0279.

"Once the Buddha Was Displaced: A Humanitarian Reading of the Vessantara Jātaka.” 2022. International Committee for the Red Cross, Religion and Humanitarian Principles.https://blogs.icrc.org/religion-humanitarianprinciples/humanitarian-reading-vessantara-jataka/.

"The Gift of Fearlessness: A Buddhist Framework for the Protection of Vulnerable Populations Under International Humanitarian Law." 2022. Contemporary Buddhism, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14639947.2022.2038027.

"A Humanitarian Re-reading of the Angulimala Sutta.” 2021. International Committee for the Red Cross, Religion and Humanitarian Principles. https://blogs.icrc.org/religion-humanitarianprinciples/a-humanitarian-re-reading-of-the-angulimala-sutta/.

"Humanizing the Divine Childhood: Epistolography as Human Formation in Tibetan Buddhism." 2021. Numen 68 (4): pp. 336-356. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341627.

"Printing Tibetan Epistolaria: A Bibliographical Analysis of Epistolary Transformations from Manuscript to Xylograph." 2020. The Journal of Epistolary Studies Vol. 2 (1): 19-33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.51734/jes.v2i1.26.

"The Buddha’s Positionality." 2020. Wabash Center Journal on Teaching, Volume 1 (1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.31046/wabashcenter.v1i1.564.

"The Global Refugee Crisis and the Gift of Fearlessness." 2019. Journal of Buddhist Ethics Vol. 26: 307-327. https://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2019/12/Kilby_19_Final-1.pdf.

"Bowing with Words: Paper, Ink, and Bodies in Tibetan Buddhist Epistles." 2019. Journal of the American Academy of Religion Vol. 87 (1): 260-281. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfy036

“Buddha Dhamma.” 2017. In Religions of India, pp. 107-137. Ed. Sushil Mittal and Gene Thursby. New York: Routledge.

Recent Conference Presentations:

"Mandalas of Security: Buddhist Approaches to Resilience and Humanitarian Relief." Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. San Antonio, TX: 2023.

"Assessing the Proportionality of Incidental Injury and Damage in Conflict-Induced Displacement: Buddhist Guidance for Decision Makers." Presentation at Reducing Suffering During Armed Conflict: The Interface Between Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law. Chiang Mai, Thailand. 2022.

"The Gift of Fearlessness: A Buddhist Principle of Protection." Presentation at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 2022.

"Speech, Script, and the Shamanic-Clerical Paradigm: Insights from Tibetan Letters to Gods, Demons, and Oracles." Presentation at the International Seminar of Young Tibetologists, University of Virginia. 2022.

"The Limits of Karma: Humanitarian Crises and the Ethics of Governmental Responsibility." Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (virtual). 2021.

"Buddhism, International Humanitarian Law, and the Protection of Internally Displaced People." Presentation at The Migration Conference (virtual). 2021.

"Conflict-Induced Displacement and the Gift of Fearlessness: A Buddhist Framework for Refugee and IDP Protection under International Humanitarian Law." Presentation at Reducing Suffering During Armed Conflict: The Interface Between Buddhism and IHL. Dambulla, Sri Lanka. 2019.

"Wisdom, Straight and Crooked: On Wisdom’s Eloquence in Tibetan Literature." Presentation at the XV Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies. Paris, France. 2019.

"Global Refugee Crisis and the Gift of Fearlessness." Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Denver, CO. 2018.

"Negotiating Identities at the Nexus of Fear: Refugees, the State, and the Gift of Fearlessness." Presentation at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C. 2018.

Listen to Dr. Kilby's May 2023 interview on With Good Reason here: "Buddhism and Warfare."  

Listen to Dr. Kilby's July 2019 interview on With Good Reason here: "Religion in the Refugee Camp."