Maria Reis Habito
Director
Elijah Interfaith Institute USA

Maria Reis Habito is the International Program Director of the Museum of World Religions and the Director of the Elijah Interfaith Institute USA.  She studied Chinese Language and Culture at Taiwan Normal University in Taipei from 1979-81 and received her M.A. in Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies and Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich in 1985. She was a research fellow at Kyoto University, Faculty of Letters from 1986-1988 and completed her Ph.D. at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitãt in 1990.  After teaching at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, she assumed responsibility for the international Interfaith program of the Museum of World Religions in 2002. She joined the Elijah Interfaith Institute in 2003. She has organized many international Interfaith conferences, notably a series of Buddhist-Muslim dialogues published under the title of "Listening: Buddhist-Muslim Dialogues 2002-2004" (Taipei, 2005), some of them in collaboration with Elijah. She is very involved in all of Elijah`s programs and instrumental in publishing some of the proceedings in German. 

E-mail: maria(at)elijah-interfaith.org