Charles Hallisey is a professor at Harvard Divinity School. His research centers on Sinhala literature, Pali language and literature, Buddhist ethics, literature in Theravāda Buddhist culture, and generally on Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a book project entitled "Flowers on the Tree of Poetry: The Moral Economy of Literature in Buddhist Sri Lanka.  He has recently completed a project, with Professor P.B. Meegaskumbura of the University of Peradeniya, on the Sandeśa poetry of Sri Lanka, "Preoccupied with the Real: The Sinhala Sandeśa Poetry of Sri Lanka." This project was part of the research project "Mapping the World through the Courier Poems" that was sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies.