Mark Singleton has worked on yoga in tradition and modernity. He was research assistant to Elizabeth De Michelis at Cambridge University’s Dharam Hinduja Institute of Indic Research in 2002-3, and went on to complete a Ph.D at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity. He taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at St. John’s College (Santa Fe, New Mexico) for seven years, and has been a senior long-term research scholar at the American Institute of Indian Studies, based in Jodhpur (Rajasthan, India). He was a consultant and catalogue author for the 2013 exhibition ‘Yoga: The Art of Transformation’ at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C..

Between 2015-2020 he was employed as a senior researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, working on a five-year European Research Council-funded project entitled ‘The Hatha Yoga Project: Mapping Indian and Transnational Traditions of Physical Yoga through Philology and Ethnography’, in collaboration with two other scholars on this site (James Mallinson and Jason Birch).

Dr. Singleton was featured on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Secret History of Yoga’ available here.

Publications

Books

2017  – Roots of Yoga: A Sourcebook from the Indic Traditions (London: Penguin Classics. (With James Mallinson).

2014 – (ed. with Ellen Goldberg) Gurus of Modern Yoga, Oxford University Press USA. This book includes a chapter co-written by Mark Singleton and Tara Fraser and entitled ‘T. Krishnamacharya, ”Father of Modern Yoga”’.

2010 – Yoga Body, The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press).

2008 – (ed. with Jean Byrne) Yoga in The Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives (London; New York: Routledge Hindu Studies Series).

2007 – (Ed.) Asian Medicine, Tradition and Modernity (Special Yoga Issue) 3.1 (Leiden: Brill).

Articles and book sections

2019 – ‘The Yoga of the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati: Haṭhayoga on the Cusp of Modernity’. Journal of Yoga Studies, (2) 1, pp 3-70. (with Jason Birch).

2017 –  ‘The Spiritual Body in Twentieth-Century Yoga’. Proceedings of the International Workshop, ‘Modernization and Spiritual, Mental and Physical Practices: From Yoga to Reiki’. Kyoto: Kyoto University Research Information Repository, Institute for Research in Humanities, (Jinbunken), Kyoto University.

2017 – ‘David Frawley and Vedic Yoga’. In the name of the Veda: Referring to Vedic Authority in India and Abroad. Abingdon; New York: Routledge.

2017 – ‘Translation of article ‘Religious Modernity’, by Sébastian Tank-Storper’ Dictionnaire des faits religieux [English Edition].

2016  – ‘Yoga and physical culture: Transnational history and blurred discursive contexts’. In: Jacobsen, Knut A., (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India. London: Routledge, pp 172-184.

2016  – Preface to the Serbian edition of Yoga Body, the Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Belgrade: Neopress Publishing). Telo joge: koreni moderne posturalne prakse. Belgrade, Neopress Publishing).

2014  – ヨガ・ボディ―ポーズ練習の起源 ― (Japanese edition of Yoga Body, the Origins of Modern Posture Practice) (Tokyo: Ohsumi Shoten).

2013  – ‘Modern Yoga’, in Debra Diamond (ed.) Yoga the Art of Transformation, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C., pp.95-103.

2013 – ‘Body at the Centre: The Postural Yoga Renaissance and Transnational Flows’ in Beatrix Hauser (ed.) Yoga Traveling: Bodily Practice in Transcultural Perspective (Heidelberg: Springer), pp. 37-56. You can download the PDF here.

2012 – ‘The Medium and the Message: Visual Reproduction and the Yogasana Revival’, in V. Lo and R. Yoeli-Tlalim (eds.) Sports, Medicine and Immortality: from Ancient China to the World Wide Web (London: British Museum).

2012 – ‘Yoga Makaranda of T. Krishnamacharya’, in D.G. White (ed.), Yoga in Practice (Princeton University Press), pp.337-352.

2009 – ‘Modern Yoga’, in K.A. Jacobsen (ed.) Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Leiden: Brill).

2008 – ‘The Classical Reveries of Modern Yoga: Patañjali and Constructive Orientalism’, in Singleton and Byrne (eds). (See above.)

2008 – ‘Introduction: Putting the Modern in Modern Yoga’, in Singleton and Byrne (eds). (See above.)

2008 – ‘The Eastern Classics Program at St. John’s College’, in T. de Bary (ed.) Classics for an Emerging World: Proceeding of the Conference at Columbia University.

2007 – ‘Suggestive Therapeutics: New Thought’s Relationship to Modern Yoga’ in Asian Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 3.1: 64-84.

2007 – ‘Lure of the Fallen Seraphim: Sovereignty and Sacrifice in James Joyce and Georges Bataille’, James Joyce Quarterly, 44.2 (Winter), 303-323.

2007 – ‘Yoga, Eugenics and Spiritual Darwinism in the Early Twentieth Century’. International Journal of Hindu Studies, 11.2: 125-146.

2007 – ‘British Wheel of Yoga’ in D. Cush, C. Robinson and M.York (eds.) Encyclopedia of Hinduism, (London and New York: Curzon-Routledge): 123-3.

2007 – ‘Choudhury, Bikram (b. 1946)’ in D.Cush et al (eds.): 142.

2007 – ‘Desikachar, T.K.V. and Viniyoga’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 178.

2007 – ‘Indra Devi (1900-2002)’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 369-70.

2007 – ‘Iyengar, B.K.S. (b. 1918) and Iyengar Yoga’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 380-1.

2007 – ‘Krishnamacharya, T. (1888-1989)’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 424.

2007 – ‘Kuvalayananda, Swami (1883-1966) and Kaivalyadhama’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 441-2.

2007 – ‘Jois, K. Pattabhi and Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 393.

2007 – ‘Satchidananda, Swami and Integral Yoga’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 769.

2007 – ‘Satyananda, Swami (b. 1923) and the Bihar School of Yoga’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 776.

2007 – ‘Vishnudevananda (1927-93) and Sivananda Yoga’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 960-1.

2007 – ‘Yogendra, Shri (1897-1989) and the Yoga Institute, Santa Cruz’: 1041-2.

2007 – ‘Yoga, Modern’ in D. Cush et al (eds.): 1033-1038.

2006 – Review of Joseph Alter’s Yoga in Modern India, in Asian Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 2.1: 91-93.

2005 – ‘Salvation Through Relaxation: Proprioceptive Therapy in Relation to Yoga’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 20, 3 (2005) 289-304.