Aarhus-OCHS Workshop

A participation-by-invitation workshop was organised by Dr Marianne Fibiger, Aarhus University, in collaboration with Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen, OCHS, aimed at networking, funding applications and to facilitate an in-depth discussion amongst scholars. The workshop was funded by the South Asian Religion research unit (SAR) at Aarhus University, Denmark.

The workshop addressed new research and insights into the relationship, overlap, and interplay between ritual performance and the uses of texts and body within South Asian religions historicallly and presently, in South Asia and beyond.

The triple interrelationship between text-ritual-body both on an ontological and a performative level was the main theme.  Papers were submitted on a variety of areas including pan South Asian traditions, esoteric practices, the exoteric temple cults, reinventing tradition, and the differences between orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

Conference attendees included:

• Dr Marianne Quortrup Fibiger, Associate Professor at the Study of Religion, Aarhus University.
• Dr Bjarne Wernicke Olesen, Research Lecturer at the OCHS and tutor in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sanskrit at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford.
• Dr Jessica Frazier, Fellow at the OCHS and Research Lecturer at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford.
• Professor Knut Jacobsen, Study of Religion, University of Bergen.
• PhD candidate Jacob Hartvig Sandager Hansen, Study of Religion, Aarhus University.
• Professor Gavin Flood, Academic Director of the OCHS and Yap Kim Hao Professor of Comparative Religious Studies, Yale-NUS College.