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Site Advisory Board
Prof. Joseph Alter
Joseph Alter received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. He is a sociocultural anthropologist whose area of interest is South Asia. His research is in the field of medical anthropology on topics of physical fitness, public health, social psychology, and the relationship between health, culture, and politics broadly defined. more…
Prof. David Gordon White
David Gordon White received his Ph.D. (with Honors) from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago in 1988. He also studied Hinduism at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, France, between 1977-1980 and 1985-1986. A specialist of South Asian religions, he is the J. F. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has been teaching since 1996. more…
Dr Dominik Wujastyk
Dominik Wujastyk was born in London, and spent much of his childhood in Sudan, Uganda and Malta. He has degrees in Physics, and Sanskrit with Pali, and a doctorate in Sanskrit from Oxford University. He has published and taught on the history of Indian medicine and science, the history of Sanskrit grammar, Indian miniature painting, the study and preservation of Sanskrit manuscripts, and the history of yoga philosophy. More…
Site Managers
Dr Elizabeth De Michelis
(Senior manager) Elizabeth De Michelis’ areas of expertise and current research are as follows: History, philosophy and texts relating to Indic forms of yoga and meditation; the Hindu and Buddhist contexts within which these practices developed and continue to develop; their spread East and West; Indic-inspired aspects of Western esotericism. In the past Elizabeth carried out research in these areas at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge… more…
Dr Suzanne Newcombe
Suzanne Newcombe researches modern yoga from a sociological and social historical perspective. She also has extensive experience in Sociology of Religion specialising in new and minority religious movements in contemporary Britain. Since 2002, she has worked for Inform, a registered charity based at the LSE that researches and provides information on new and minority religions and spiritualities using social scientific methodology. She is also an Associate Lecturer for the Open University in the East of England… more…
Dr Mark Singleton
Mark Singleton works on the history of ideas in transnational yoga and currently teaches at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was research assistant to Elizabeth De Michelis in 2003-4, and went on to complete a Ph.D on modern yoga at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. His latest publication Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press, 2009) is based on his Ph.D thesis … more…
Site Contributors
Prof. Karl Baier
Karl Baier is Professor at the University of Vienna (Institute for the Study of Religions) and has a long standing interest in the history and modernisation of yoga and meditation, as well as in the study of spirituality in Christianity and other religions. His Habilitation, submitted in 2008, was on the topic of Meditation and Modernity … more…
Jason Birch
Jason Birch is currently working toward a PhD in Oriental Studies at Oxford University under the supervision of Professor Alexis Sanderson. The main area of his research is the Medieval Yoga traditions of India, particularly the Sanskrit texts of Haṭhayoga and Rājayoga which derived from Tantric traditions. His thesis will include a critical edition, translation and study of a Rājayoga text called the Amanaska. … more…
Prof. Christian Bouy
Christian Bouy received his doctorate from Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris IV, in 1981. His thesis was entitled ‘Matériaux pour servir à l’étude de l’Āgamaśāstra de Gauḍapāda’. Since 1981, his work has focused mainly on Sanskritic Hindu philosophical texts. The main areas of his research have been 1. a comparative study of the Upaniṣads, which led him to become interested in the whole of Hindu Sanskritic texts and their chronology; 2. the philosophical literature of non-dualist (advaita) Vedānta; 3. Hindu Purānic texts; 4. yogic texts of the Nāths; 5. Hindu tantric texts. more…
Prof. Christopher Key Chapple
Christopher Key Chapple is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A specialist in the religions of India, he has published more than a dozen books, including Karma and Creativity (1986), Nonviolence to Animals, Earth, and Self in Asian Traditions (1993), Reconciling Yogas: Haribhadra’s Yogadrstisamuccaya (2003), Yoga and the Luminous (2008, winner of Gandhi Prize for Dharma Studies)… more
Dr Ann Gleig
Ann Gleig recently received her Ph.D. in religious studies from Rice University and is currently a teaching fellow at Millsaps College. Her areas of specialization are Asian religions in America as well as religion and psychology. She has published and presented on numerous aspects of her research, and is presently working on a co-edited book collection (with Lola Williamson) titled Homegrown Gurus: From Hinduism in America to American Hinduism. more…
Prof. Ellen Goldberg
Ellen Goldberg is currently Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Ellen obtained an MA and a PhD in Religious Studies from the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her doctoral work published in 2002 under the title The Lord Who Is Half Woman: Ardhanārīśvara in Indian and Feminist Perspective (SUNY Press) includes an extensive analysis of the significance of Ardhanārīśvara in haṭha and tantric yoga. more…
Dr Philipp André Maas
Philipp André Maas is assistant professor at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. He received his M.A. (1997) and Dr. phil. (2004) degrees from the University of Bonn, Germany, where he studied Indology, Comparative Religious Studies, Tibetology and Philosophy. more…
Dr James Mallinson
James Mallinson’s interest in yoga grew out of a fascination for India and Indian asceticism – he spent several years living with Indian ascetics and yogis, in particular Rāmānandī Tyāgīs. His MA thesis, part of a major in ethnography, was on Indian asceticism. He became dissatisfied, however, with (to quote Sheldon Pollock) the “hypertrophy of method” that afflicts much of the humanities, and anthropology in particular, so sought to ground his future research in philology. more…
Klas Nevrin
Klas Nevrin is currently writing a Ph.D on modern hathayoga at the Department of History of Religions of Stockholm University, Sweden. He is particularly interested in the philosophical aspects of yoga practice: how are the body and bodily practice approached and conceptualized within modern yoga? How are we to understand claims of empowerment and authenticity? To this end Klas is working with an approach inspired by several philosophers … more…
Prof. Andrew J. Nicholson
Andrew J. Nicholson is Assistant Professor of Hinduism and Indian Intellectual History at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. His primary area of research is Indian philosophy and intellectual history, most recently focusing on medieval Vedanta and theistic yoga philosophies, and their influence on modern India and Europe. His book, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History was published in 2010 by Columbia University Press. more…
Prof. Smriti Srinivas
Smriti Srinivas is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Srinivas’ research focuses on cultures of the body, urban space, social and cultural memory, and religion. Her most recent book, In the Presence of Sai Baba (2008), examines a transnational religious movement centered on the Indian guru, Sathya Sai Baba (1926-2011) in three cities—Bangalore, Nairobi, and Atlanta—and the reworking of bhakti or devotion in a global milieu. more…
Prof. Hugh B. Urban
Hugh B. Urban is a professor of religious studies and South Asian studies in the Department of Comparative Studies at Ohio State University. He is primarily interested in Tantra and in the complex interactions between Tantra and new religious currents in America and Europe. He is the author of seven books, including Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics and Power in the Study of Religions (2003)… more…
Dr Raphaël Voix
Raphaël Voix holds an MA and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Paris West Nanterre la Défense where he is a part-time lecturer, and also an MA in Bengali from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Paris) where he teaches Hinduism. He is an associate member of the Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS : http://ceias.ehess.fr). more…
Dr Maya Warrier
Maya Warrier is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Lampeter. Her research explores popular Hindu traditions in modern transnational contexts. Her monograph, Hindu Selves in a Modern World: Guru Faith in the Mata Amritanandamayi Mission (Routledge-Curzon, 2005) examines contemporary forms of bhakti (devotion) and seva (service) practised by the urban Indian ‘middle class’ devotees of the transnational guru Mata Amritanandamayi (popularly known as Amma). more…
Prof. Lola Williamson
Lola Williamson’s research centers on Hinduism in the United States with an emphasis on yoga and meditation movements. She founded the Hinduism in America Consultation of the American Academy of Religion. Her book, Transcendent in America: Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements as New Religion (New York University Press, 2010) uses Self-Realization Fellowship, Transcendental Meditation, and Siddha Yoga as case studies to argue that these and similar groups form a distinct category of new religion. more…