People

Smriti Srinivas is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. Srinivas’ research interests include cities and urban cultures, religion, the body, South Asia within a comparative context and Indian Ocean worlds. Her most recent work, Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint: Shirdi Sai Baba’s Presence (2022), is a co-edited volume with Neelima Jeychandran and Allen Roberts, and focuses on the presence and contemporaneity of Shirdi Sai Baba (d.1918), who has a vast following in postcolonial South Asia and an ever-growing global diaspora.

Federico Squarcini taught at Florence University and at the Università La Sapienza, Rome, before joining the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice, Italy, where he is currently Associated Professor of History of Religions. Prof. Squarcini lectures on a range of South-Asia related topics, including Indian philosophy and religions. He is also Director of doctoral studies with regard to Asian subjects and In 2012 he launched the Ca’ Foscari Yoga Studies MA (information in Italian here), which he continues to direct. His main teaching and research interests include Sanskrit normative textual traditions (dharmaśāstra), intellectual history of asceticism and anthropotechnics, western receptions of South Asian cultural and intellectuals traditions, methods and theories in the studies of religions.

Andrew J. Nicholson is Associate 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, particularly medieval Vedanta and theistic yoga philosophies and their influence in the modern world. His first book, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (Columbia University Press, 2010), won the 2011 award for Best First Book in the History of Religions from the American Academy of Religion. Professor Nicholson’s second book, Lord Śiva’s Song: The Īśvara Gītā (SUNY Press, 2014), is an annotated translation of an 8th century Pāśupata Yoga text.

James Mallinson is Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit and Classical and Indian Studies at SOAS, University of London. Between September 2015-2020, Mallinson was the Principle Investigator of The Haṭha Yoga Project (HYP), a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council and based at SOAS, University of London which aims to chart the history of physical yoga practice by means of philology, i.e. the study of texts on yoga, and ethnography, i.e. fieldwork among practitioners of yoga. From January 2021, Mallison will be the lead on three year project entitled “Light on Hatha Yoga: A critical edition and translation of the Haṭhapradīpikā, the most important premodern text on physical yoga” funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Foundation Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

Jacqueline Hargreaves, BE (Hons), E-RYT, is Coordinator of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies and Programme Convenor of YogaStudies Online at SOAS, University of London. She researches the contemporary meeting place between historical practices and their application in a modern (mainly therapeutic) environment.

Paolo Magnone is currently professor of  Sanskrit Language and Literature at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, besides teaching Study of Religions: Hinduism & Buddhism at the Higher Institute for Religious Sciences (both in Milan, Italy).  His main research interests include studies in the mythological narratives of the epico-purāṇic literature with variously thematic, hermeneutical, text-critical, and comparative approaches; the philosophy of the Upaniṣads and Sāṃkhya–Yoga in the light of the commentators; comparative studies in Ancient Greek and Indian philosophical thought.

Ellen Goldberg is Retired Professor of Religions of South Asia 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. Goldberg has also written several articles on the intersection between yoga and cognitive science. She has authored a chapter on “Swami Kṛpalvānanda” for a book edited with Mark Singleton titled Gurus of Modern Yoga and has an article on “Amrit Desai and the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Holistic Health” in Lola Williamson and Anne Gleig’s book titled Homegrown Gurus: From Hinduism in America to American Hinduism (SUNY Press). Ellen’s other projects include articles on “Pārvatī” and “Ardhanārīśvara” for the newly launched Oxford Online Bibliographic Series and a book in preparation on Swami Kṛpalvānanda’s contributions to modern yoga.

Laura von Ostrowski studied Indology, Religious Studies and Romance Studies at LMU Munich.From 2015-2018 she was a fellow of the DFG Research Training Group “Presence and Implicit Knowledge” at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg and received her PhD in Religious Studies in 2021. The book to her PhD-thesis was published Open Access under the title A Text in Motion in 2022. Her areas of research include modern and contemporary yoga, the reception of the Yogasūtra, the history of German yoga and of the physical culture movement, contemporary religion, aesthetics and embodiment. Since 2007, she works as a yoga teacher, runs her own yoga studio in the centre of Munich since 2018 and teaches about the history of modern yoga at the online education portal www.yogastudien.de, associated with the University of Hamburg, Germany.

Dr Borayin Larios is head of the Indology Department at the French Institute of Pondicherry and EFEO fellow. He holds an MA in Religious Studies from Fribourg and Lausanne (Switzerland) universities and a PhD in Classical Indology from Heidelberg University (Germany) and served as an assistant professor at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna. Dr. Larios uses an interdisciplinary methodological approach, combining cultural anthropology, religious studies, and historical philology to understand the religious traditions of contemporary India. His main regional focus is Maharashtra. He is the author of Embodying the Vedas: Traditional Vedic Schools of Contemporary Maharashtra, published by DeGruyter Open Access in 2017. He is also a member of the Centre for Yoga Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and also a core member of the Yoga in Latin America Project (YoLA Project) led by Adrián Muñoz. He is co-editor with Muñoz on the first publication dedicated to Yoga in Latinamerica entitled: “Latināsana: The Avatars of Yoga in Latin America”, which is forthcoming with HASP.  

Theo Wildcroft, PhD is a researcher investigating the democratization and evolution of physical practice as it moves beyond both traditional and early modern frameworks of relationship. Her PhD was a significant advance in the analysis of contemporary yoga pedagogies. Her research continues to consider the democratization of yoga post-lineage, and meaning-making in grassroots communities of practice. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, UK, former Coordinator of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, editor of the BASR Bulletin, honorary member of the British Wheel of Yoga, member of the IAYT, and a continuing professional development trainer and consultant for Yoga Alliance (US). Her monograph Post-lineage yoga: from guru to #metoo is available from Equinox.