Michael Ium was born and raised in Toronto as the child of South Korean immigrants before going on to complete degrees at the University of Toronto (BSc Psychology), Maitripa College (MA Buddhist Studies), and the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Department of Religious Studies (MA, PhD 2023, Buddhist Studies emphasis). Most recently, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion and The Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies. He joins the Institute in 2025 as a postdoc within the ERC-funded project “TibSchol: The Dawn of Tibetan Buddhist Scholasticism (11th–13th c.).”

A textualist and historian of religion, his research focuses on the religions of Tibet and South Asia, and in particular, on the early history of Ganden Monastery and the construction of the Geluk tradition in Tibet. Although the Geluk tradition is largely considered a monastic and scholastic tradition, his research emphasizes the importance of understudied aspects of the tradition, such as mahāsiddhas, oracular prophecies, and pilgrimage, to its growth and development. That said, he is excited to bring his knowledge of the Tibetan religious and scholarly context, the historical formation of Buddhist schools, and the development of monastic institutions and scholastic traditions to bear on the TibSchol project.

In his capacity as Co-Editor for the Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies (CJBS, https://thecjbs.org/), he is also excited to develop further collaborations between scholars based in Europe and in Canada.