He is the author of The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (University of Chicago Press, 2013); it won a Toshihide Numata Book Prize in Buddhism in 2014. His current book project, tentatively entitled A Great Awakening, explores the role of insight practice in contemporary reformulations of notions about the self and society within the globalized insight meditation scene. He received his Ph.D. in the Study of Religion from Harvard University.