Vincent Goossaert高万桑

Style & Daoist names

Vincent Goossaert

Period

Contemporary

Dates

1969 — ?

Role

HistorianDaoist ScholarsProfessor, École Pratique des Hautes Études, France

Birthplace

France

Life

Vincent Goossaert, a French historian, is a professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) and formerly director of its Section of Religious Studies; he is a leading figure in contemporary French Daoist studies. His doctoral dissertation studied the founding of Jin–Yuan Quanzhen Daoism (La création du taoïsme moderne: l'ordre Quanzhen, 1997), after which he turned to the social history of Daoism in the Ming, Qing and modern periods, writing The Taoists of Peking, 1800–1949: A Social History of Urban Clerics (2007) and, with David Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (2011); he has also studied salvationist morality books, thunder rites, the Zhengyi Celestial Masters, and local religion. His recent works include Making Saints: Daoism and Local Society since the Ming and Qing and Heavenly Masters: Two Thousand Years of the Daoist State (2021). The above is drawn from publicly available academic information.

Contributions & Influence

• Studied the founding of Quanzhen Daoism and the social history of Daoist priests in Beijing
• Co-authored The Religious Question in Modern China with David Palmer
• Studied the hereditary Celestial Masters and the social history of Ming–Qing Daoism

Works

• The Taoists of Peking, 1800-1949
• The Religious Question in Modern China (co-authored)
• Heavenly Masters: Two Thousand Years of the Daoist State
• La création du taoïsme moderne