Team Members | Page 2 of 9 | Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Online

Daniela Bevilacqua

Daniela Bevilacqua is an Indianist specialising in Hindu asceticism, investigated through an ethnographic and historical perspective. She is currently a researcher at CRIA (ISCTE-IUL) in Lisbon. She worked as a post-doctoral researcher at SOAS, for the ERC-funded Haṭha Yoga Project (2015–2020). She is the author of Modern Hindu Traditionalism in Contemporary India, published by Routledge; From Tapas to Modern Yoga forthcoming in 2024 published by Equinox,; and several articles and book chapters on topics related to Hindu religious tradition, gender, and embodied practices.

Prof. Gopal Gupta

Gopal Gupta is an Indian philosopher and Joe Dunham Distinguished Professor of Ethics at Aurora University. Previously, he was a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Evansville. Gopal is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies (JHCS)

Simon Haas

Simon is an author and teacher of yoga philosophy who specialises in applying yoga wisdom to everyday life. From the age of 13, Simon began studying the sacred texts of India and spent ten years living in temples and monasteries in India. He apprenticed for sixteen years with an elderly master-practitioner in the Vedānta tradition. Simon is author of the international bestseller The Book of Dharma: Making Enlightened Choices, published in six languages. His most recent book, Yoga and the Dark Night of the Soul, explores how crisis and difficulty can form part of our yoga path. Simon has delivered seminars and workshops in fourteen countries and at leading yoga festivals internationally. In 2019, he presented at the United Nations and provided training to the UN’s dispute resolution division. Simon graduated with honours from the University of Cambridge and holds a masters in comparative religion with distinction from the University of Oxford. He is currently completing doctoral studies in Oxford.

Dr Arun Brahmbhatt

Arun is Assistant Professor of South Asian Religions at St. Lawrence University, New York. His research is focused on Sanskrit scholastic traditions in colonial and contemporary western India. He is interested more broadly in print culture, the historiography of Vedānta, and the genealogy of religious traditions in Gujarat and the Gujarati diaspora. He is currently the Shivdasani Visiting Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and a director of its “Rethinking Hinduism in Colonial India” research project.

Prof. Tony K. Stewart

Tony K. Stewart is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities, Emeritus, at Vanderbilt University. He is a specialist in the religions and literatures of the Bengali-speaking world. His publications include Witness to Marvels: Sufism and the Literary Imagination (University of California Press) and The Final Word: The Caitanya Caritamrta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition (OUP).

Prof. Archana Venkatesan

Archana is Professor of Religious Studies and Comparative Literature at UC Davis. The Secret Garland, her study and translation of the ninth-century Tamil woman poet Antal, was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies, Fulbright, and the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.

Prof. Amiya P. Sen

Amiya Prosad Sen is a historian with an interest in the intellectual and cultural history of modern India. A previous Shivadasani Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Heinrich Zimmer Chair at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, he has served as Professor of Modern Indian History at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He has been Agatha Harrison Fellow to the University of Oxford and Visiting Fellow to the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, and the Centre for Contemporary Studies, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. During 2007–08, he was Tagore professor at Vishwa Bharati, Shantiniketan.

Dr Rembert Lutjeharms

Rembert is the Librarian and fellow at the OCHS and Associate Faculty Member at the Theology and Religion Faculty at Oxford University. He is an editor of the Journal of Hindu Studies, published by Oxford University Press. Rembert holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Oriental Studies (Indology) from the University of Ghent, Belgium, 2003. He successfully completed his D.Phil. in Theology at the University of Oxford in 2010, focusing on the theology of the sixteenth-century Caitanya Vaishvana poet and literary critic Kavikarnapura.