Paul Williams is professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy and founding co-director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol. His work has focused on Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy, a school of Buddhism that developed in India two millennia ago and has had wide influence on Buddhist thought throughout India, Tibet, and East Asia. He also has written on Western philosophical and mystical theology. A graduate of the University of Sussex, where he took first-class honors in philosophy and religion, Dr. Williams earned his D.Phil. in Buddhist philosophy from Oxford University in 1978. He had begun his teaching career as a temporary lecturer in Indian civilization and religion at the University of Edinburgh three years earlier. He went on to The Open University as a lecturer in religious studies, and, in 1980, he joined the Bristol faculty as a lecturer in Indo-Tibetan studies. He became a reader in 1992 and was named to his present chair in 1998. He has been the Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Calgary and lectured widely. A fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, Dr. Williams has been a long time member of the Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education, which advises on school religious curricula in Britain, and formerly served as its chair. He also has been president of the UK Association of Buddhist Studies and European secretary of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. A member of the editorial boards of Seria Buddhica Britannica, the Buddhist Studies Review, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, and the Journal of Contemporary Buddhist Studies, he was formerly a guest editor of a special issue of The Tibetan Journal and joint editor of World Religions in Education. He currently serves as advisory editor for a series on Buddhist thought for Curzon Press. In addition to articles in academic journals and chapters in volumes of collected works, Dr. Williams is the      co-author of two books, including, most recently, (with Anthony Tribe) Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition (2000), sole editor of the eight-volume series for Routledge Critical Concepts in Religious Studies: Buddhism, and the author of five books: Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (1989), which has been reprinted eleven times and translated into Italian and Korean; A Tibetan Madhyamaka Defence of Reflexive Nature of Awareness (1996); Altruism and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of Bodhicaryavatara (1998); and The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Catholicism (2001). His most recent book, Songs of Love, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama, a translation from the Tibetan with an introductory essay, was published last year        by I.B. Tauris.