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RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROFILE   

Professor Geoffrey Samuel

 

Position:                  Conjoint professor for the School of Humanities and Social Sciences,

                                currently seconded to a tenure position as a Professorial Fellowship

Faculty/Division:     School of Religious and Theological Studies, Cardiff University, Wales, U.K.
Phone:                     (029) 20876486, 20874240
Fax:                         +44-29-20874500
Email:                       SamuelG@cardiff.ac.uk, Geoffrey.Samuel@newcastle.edu.au

Mailing address:       Religious and Theological Studies, Cardiff University, Humanities

                                Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, Wales UK           


Web page (personal):        http://users.hunterlink.net.au/~mbbgbs

Web page (institutional): http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/relig/contactsandpeople/stafflist/prof-geoffrey-samuel-overview.html

 

Brief biography

Professor Geoffrey Samuel relocated to Cardiff University, UK, in December 2004. He is an affiliate of CAPSTRANS and has a Conjoint Professor appointment at the University of Newcastle. Professor Samuel continues to work in the areas of religion, politics and society in Asia (particularly Tibet and South Asia); comparative sociology of systems of knowledge; symbolism, cognition and cultural processes and their effects on human behaviour; the nature of ritual; shamanism; processes of change in social and cultural systems; the anthropology of music.  Professor Samuels is also the Vice-President of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Asian Medicine and will be co-editing their journal Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity from mid-2008. Professors Samuel and Connor are currently collaborating on a paper on traditional Tibetan medicine and modernity among exiles in India.

Research

My research extends over a number of interrelated areas within religious studies, social anthropology, comparative sociology, and cognate disciplines. Theoretically, my interests centre around the understanding of cultural processes and their effects on human behaviour, with especial reference to shamanism, healing, ritual and religion and their contemporary analogues. My main ethnographic focus has been on religion in Tibetan societies. My work on Tibetan religion has also extended into the social history of Indic religions more generally. Other research topics include Tibetan medicine and health practices, the anthropology of music, and research on Buddhism and other new religious movements (paganism, shamanism) in the UK and Australia. I have carried out extensive field research over many years in India, Nepal, Tibet, and other Asian and Western societies. At present, I am completing a book on the history of Indic religions until 1200 CE, based on the Wilde lectures in Natural and Comparative Religion that I gave at the University of Oxford in 2002. My future research plans centre about the understanding of healing processes in a variety of contexts: folk healing practices in Asian societies, ‘traditional’ Asian medical and yogic practices aimed at healing, and Western adaptations and developments of such practices within the field of complementary and alternative medicine.

Areas of Research

Research Student Supervision

PhDs (currently under supervision)

External supervisor for PhDs (currently under supervision)
Past Research Supervision (since 2000)

Current Research Activities

ARC Discovery Project, “Muslims and Christians: Women, Religious Nationalism and Sustainability in the Asia Pacific Region” (Santi Rozario, Geoffrey Samuel and HM Carey)

This project should provide agencies concerned with national security and immigration with an improved understanding of the impact of religious nationalism on communities and individuals. It will contribute to the effectiveness of Australian overseas aid initiatives, both government and voluntary, by increasing the available knowledge of how communities are sustaining themselves at present. It should, further, produce findings that make it easier for health, education and welfare agencies to deal sensitively with Muslim communities within Australia.

Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), ‘Muslims and Christians: Women, Religious Nationalism and Sustainability in the Asia Pacific Region’ (Santi Rozario and Geoffrey Samuel, with Terry Lovat and Hilary Carey)

Today new religious nationalisms are of increasing global significance, and women are being used as boundary markers of religious identity from the international to the local level, while their behaviour is increasingly determined and policed by male religious hierarchies. This ARC-funded project looks at the impact on those religious rituals and practices, long studied by anthropologists and historians, which ensure the sustainability of communities and are frequently the responsibility of women. Ethnographic studies of minority women in mixed Muslim-Christian communities in Bangladesh and Australia are being undertaken to explore the consequences for these communities and the women in them.

Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), ‘Subtle Bodies in Indic Religions and Related Traditions’ (Geoffrey Samuel)

This project is a series of activities funded by Cardiff University Visiting Research Fellow Grant, relating to subtle body concepts in Indic religions and related traditions. Professor Samuel organized conference panels in Delhi in Dec 2005 and Austin, Texas in April 2006, a visit to Cardiff University by Jay Johnston of Sydney University in Nov-Dec 2006 and an associated workshop in Cardiff in Dec 2006. A book proposal is under consideration by Cambridge University Press. A joint funding application is also under consideration with Jay Johnston and Ruth Barcan of Sydney University.

Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), ‘Longevity Practices and Concepts in Tibet: A Study of Long-Life Practices in the Dudjom Tradition’ (Geoffrey Samuel)

This project, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, is a study of Tibetan concepts and practices relating to health and long life. We are studying a representative body of texts from the 19th and 20th centuries (the Chimé Sogt'ig or “immortal Life-Essence” practices within the Dudjom tradition) and working with contemporary scholars and practitioners within the tradition to establish how this tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism understands issues of longevity and good health and what techniques and practices are used to achieve them. We are particularly interested in how mind, body and the social and wider environment enter into concepts of longevity and health within these texts and practices.

Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), ‘Musical Form and Ritual Meaning in the Phur-pa Ritual Cycle of the Tibetan Bon-Po Religion’ (Geoffrey Samuel and Ricardo Canzio)

Joint project with Prof. Ricardo Canzio, National Taiwan University. Funded by the British Academy and National Science Council Taiwan. The aim of the project is to analyse the relationship between musical form and ritual communication in a major genre of Tibetan ritual practice, the Phur-pa ritual cycle of the Tibetan Bon-po (or Bon) religion. The performative aspects of Tibetan liturgy have been largely neglected in the existing literature. This project aims at integrating the analysis of the complex musical forms and procedures involved in this ritual cycle with the ritual action, including the "internal" visualisations and meditative procedures involved in the practice and the various interactions with deities and spiritual forces implied and assumed by the practice.

Major Accomplishments

Books & Monographs (since 2000)

Book Chapters (since 2000)

Refereed Journal Articles (since 2000)

Other Publications and Presentations (since 2000)

Refereed Conference Proceedings

Conference Papers

Conference and Workshop Organisation

Research Grants

Qualifications

Languages

Academic Appointments

Memberships of Professional Associations