Archives: Team Members

Christopher R. Austin is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he lectures widely on the religious traditions of India, China, Japan and Tibet. His research focuses chiefly on the Sanskrit epics, Krishna and his son Pradyumna, and early Vaishnavism.

Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor of Religion and the Director for the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra) at the University of Florida, and a past President of the American Academy of Religion. She is an associate editor of the six-volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Her research has been supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation,  the Centre for Khmer Studies, the American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies/ Smithsonian, and the Social Science Research Council. She is the author or editor of several books and numerous articles and chapters in books.

Hillary Rodrigues is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge. His books include Ritual Worship of the Great Goddess and the co-edited Nine Nights of the Goddess. His digital publications include Hinduism-the eBook and Eastern Religions: Understanding Our Religious World. He has been honoured with his institution’s Distinguished Teaching Medal.

Caleb Simmons is an associate professor of Religious Studies and specialises in religion in South Asia, especially Hinduism. He is the author of Devotional Sovereignty: Kingship and Religion in India, and edited (with Moumita Sen and Hillary Rodrigues) the scholarly collection of essays titled Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navarātri Festival in South Asia.

Noor van Brussel combines a research position at the Erasmus University Brussels with lecturing Sanskrit at Ghent University. Her scholarship focuses on regional goddess worship, exploring the relationships between pre-modern religious text and contemporary ritual practice. She has authored several publications on narrative strategy in the Bhadrakāḷīmāhātmya, a South Indian purāṇa devoted to the regional goddess Bhadrakāḷī slaying her asura opponent.

Brenda Beck holds a D.Phil. from Oxford (1968). Her thesis built around several years of research work in the villages of Tamil Nadu. Since then, she has taught at several North American universities and lectured at many more around the world. She has twice been a Guest Lecturer in India courtesy of the Indian Government. She has authored and/or edited eight books and more than fifty articles, mainly focused on the rich traditions and beliefs shared by Hindus in the rural areas of Kongu Nadu, a part of Tamil Nadu.

Tracy Coleman is Professor of Religion at Colorado College in Colorado, USA, and the editor of Oxford Bibliographies: Hinduism. She is a scholar of gender and bhakti traditions, especially Krishna-bhakti in the Sanskrit epics and purāṇas, and has published studies on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the Gītagovinda, and Sanskrit commentary. 

Tracy Pintchman is a professor of religious studies and director of the Global and International Studies Program at Loyola University of Chicago. Her scholarly publications include five edited and coedited volumes and two books. Her current book, Goddess Beyond Boundaries: Worshipping the Eternal Mother at a North American Hindu Temple, is under contract with Oxford University Press.