Rafal K. Stepien is a Research Associate and European Research Council Principal Investigator at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, where he leads a team researching Chinese Buddhist philosophy.

Rafal was the inaugural Berggruen Research Fellow in Indian Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and has also been the inaugural Cihui Foundation Faculty Fellow in Chinese Buddhism at Columbia University, a Humboldt Research Fellow in Buddhist Studies at Heidelberg University, and the Soudavar Memorial Research Scholar in Persian Studies at the University of Cambridge. His books include Buddhist Literature as Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy as Literature(SUNY Press, 2020), The Three Jewels: Essaying Buddhist Philosophy of Religion (SUNY Press, forthcoming), and Buddhism Between Religion and Philosophy: Nāgārjuna and the Ethics of Emptiness (Oxford University Press, 2024).