Monika Hirmer April 23
Playing (with) Devī: Praxis, māyā and ungendered femininity
Monika Hirmer is a doctoral candidate at SOAS researching ‘Becoming the Goddess: Study of a contemporary South Indian Tantric tradition and its implications for concepts of personhood, gender relations and everyday life.’
Room: G51, SOAS Main Building

Dr Daniela Bevilacqua April 30

Yoga physical practices and female asceticism in India, an historical and ethnographic overview
Daniela Bevilacqua is a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC-funded Hatḥa Yoga Project, a South-Asianist ​collecting, through fieldwork, historical evidence of yoga practice and ethnographic data among living ascetic practitioners of yoga. She conducted doctoral research on the Rāmānandī Sampradaya and was awarded a doctoral thesis from the University of Rome, Sapienza and from the University of Paris X Nanterre Ouest La Défense. Room: G51, SOAS Main Building

Amelia Wood May 7

Power and gender in yoga

Amelia Wood is researching for a doctoral thesis at SOAS on yoga, power and gender: an investigation into the abuse of power by modern gurus.

Room: TBC

Dr Suzanne Newcombe May 14

Yoga in Britain: Reinforcing or challenging traditional gender roles?

Suzanne Newcombe is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University and Research Fellow at Inform, based at King's College London. Her doctoral research at the University of Cambridge was on the popularisation of yoga and Āyurvedic medicine in Britain. She is currently working on the ERC-funded project AYURYOG ‘Medicine, Immortality and Moksha: Entangled Histories of Yoga, Ayurveda and Alchemy in South Asia.’

Room: TBC

Sandra Sattler May 21

With hollow eyes and skull garlands: Fierce goddess imagery in purāṇic literature
Sandra Sattler is conducting doctoral research on the iconography of fierce goddesses in Hinduism. She is tracing the development of these terrifying deities, who are most popularly known as Cāmuṇḍā or Kālī, by analysing selected Purāṇas and art historical material. Room: TBC.