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Carola Lorea discusses the MANTRAMS project, a major ERC Synergy Grant initiative jointly hosted by Oxford, Vienna, and Tübingen dedicated to producing a history and anthropology of mantras. The six-year project investigates mantras across millennia and geographies — from their roots in Indian religious traditions through their circulation across South and Southeast Asia to their role in global spiritualities today — building extensive sonic, textual, and visual archives along the way.
Guest: Carola Lorea
Date: 4/23/2026
Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions (Brill, 2025) illuminates the many faces of Patañjali in Indian traditions. Often regarded as an incarnation of the cosmic serpent Ādiśeṣa or …
Guest: Gudrun Bühnemann
Date: 4/16/2026
Religion, Spirituality and Public Health: Competing and Complementary Epistemes (British Academy, 2025) focuses on exploring the role of different 'ways of knowing' or arriving at truth, i.e. epistemes, particularly those found in …
Guest: Karen O'Brien-Kop and Suzanne Newcombe
Date: 4/9/2026
Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation (Routledge, 2025) illuminates individual and collective imaginings of postcolonial Bangladesh. It explores the emergence of Bangladesh as a …
Guest: Asif Iqbal
Date: 4/2/2026
Introducing a new conference to showcase the breadth and vitality of Canadian research on premodern India. We discuss the vision behind the conference and what to expect from this inaugural gathering at the University of Alberta on May …
Guest: Dagmar Wujastyk
Date: 4/1/2026
In The Goddess in the Mirror: An Anthropology of Beauty (Duke UP, 2025), Tulasi Srinivas offers a pathbreaking ethnography of contemporary Indian beauty parlors in Bangalore. Exploring the gendered world of beauty in the intimate spaces …
Guest: Tulasi Srinivas
Date: 3/26/2026
Hindu sacred geographies are shaped by interwoven webs of myth, ritual, and pilgrimage. Routes, Patterns, Ideologies: Navigating Sacred Sites in India (HASP, 2025) brings together essays that offer in-depth explorations of Hindu sacred …
Guest: Ewa Debicka-Borek and Ofer Peres
Date: 3/19/2026
For the Love of Tamil celebrates the life and work of E. Annamalai (born 1938), the most prominent Tamil linguist of his generation. Spanning six decades and multiple continents, his scholarship ranges from formal analyses of Tamil syntax …
Guest: Margherita Trento and Constantine V. Nakassis
Date: 3/12/2026
The 4th International Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana Conference convenes 27–29 May 2026 at EHESS Paris, organized by CESAH. Theme: Authenticity, Authority and Adaptation—examining how yoga traditions establish legitimacy, transmit knowledge, …
Guest: Suzanne Newcombe and Raphael Voix
Date: 3/9/2026
The Supreme Refuge: Durgā's Transformation Into the Hindu Great Goddess (SUNY Press, 2025) provides the first comprehensive examination of the Hindu Great Goddess Durgā, one of the most significant deities in the Hindu pantheon, who is …
Guest: Hillary Rodrigues
Date: 3/5/2026
The Ocean of Yoga: A Complete Guide to Living the Teachings, Tradition, and Practice (Shambhala, 2026) is definitive guidebook to the core principles and practice of yoga—from its traditional roots to the latest contemporary developments. …
Guest: Amy Landry
Date: 3/2/2026