Dear all (and apologies for cross posting),
I am pleased to announce that the programme for the Spalding Symposium 2026, to be held on 27–28 March, held at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University, has now been finalised. Please find the programme below, which includes the full list of speakers and sessions.
Tickets can be purchased via Eventbrite at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/51st-annual-spalding-symposium-on-indian-religions-tickets-1982632212318
We very much look forward to welcoming you to what promises to be an engaging and stimulating event.
Kind regards,
The Spalding Symposium organising committee
- Kush Depala, Hershini Soneji and Saran Suebsantiwongse
Local convenor: Ankur Barua
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Friday 27 March
8:30 Arrival and registration
9:00 - 9:10 Welcome & Housekeeping
9:10 - 10:00 Keynote 1
Ankur Barua (Cambridge University)
15 min Break
10:15 - 11:45 Panel 1
Karen O’Brien-Kop (KCL): Using Samkhya to query ontological boundaries and mobilise consciousness in the Anthropocene
Rosina Pastore (UGent): Brahman and Cinema: Explaining Vedānta in 20th century North India
11:45 - 13:00 - Lunch
13:00 - 15:15 Panel 2
Nabanjan Maitra (Bard): How to Re(Write) the Veda
Paola M Rossi (Milan): The poet ‘who fashions the boundaries’: Vedic poetry and mapping cosmos
Shivani Bothra (California State: Long Beach): Reimagining Dharma: Jain Migration, Gender, and the Shifting Boundaries of Tradition
15 minute break
15:30 - 17:45 Panel 3
Brian Black (Lancaster): From the Margins to the Centre: Rethinking Nāgas in the Mahābhārata
Ayelet Kotler (Leiden): Persian Ramayanas and Mughal Cosmopolitanism
Sinah Kloß (Bonn): Hair, Heat, and Boundaries: Questioning the Material and Sensory Dimensions of the Body in Hindu Suriname
Dinner thereafter 18:45
Saturday 28 March
9:00 - 11:00 Panel 4: Postgraduate Panel
Aamir Kaderbhai (Oxford): The Infinite Mirror: Questioning the Boundary between Reality and Imagination in the Mokṣopāya
Weibing NI (Cambridge): ‘Sita Crosses Kala Pani’: Retelling the Ramayana in the Caribbean
Simon Winant (UGent): Where Othering ends and Smothering begins: how to discuss the ‘Muslim’ merchant Saʽīd/Ṣadīq in Jain chronicles
Ojaswini Shekhawat (Yale): Fantasizing as the (Un)Attainable “Other”: A 17th Century Minor Sanskritist’s Take on the Mughal Harem
15 minute break
11:15 - 12:45 Panel 5
Neelima Shukla-Bhatt (Wellesley College): Dancing and Questioning Boundaries: Garbo, the Goddess Worship Ritual of Gujarati Women
Madhumita Sengupta (IIT Gandhinagar): Ashaan Bibi and the Cultural Resonances of Partition in Bengal
12:45 - 14:00 - Lunch
14:00 - 15:30 Panel 6
Mukesh Kumar (Zürich): Fluid Frontiers of Faith: Boundary Crossing in the Ritual Ecology of South Canara
Maharshi Vyas (UNC Chapel Hill): What does it mean to be ‘tribal’? Questioning Identitarian Boundaries through Historical Interactions and Contemporary Lived Religious Realities
15 minute break
15:45 - 16:35 Closing Keynote
Prof. Monica Juneja (HCTS, Heidelberg University)
16:35 - 16:45 - Closing Remarks