Head of Department Prof. Dr. William Sax
Prof. William S. Sax, a distinguished anthropologist, completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Banaras Hindu University, India, before earning both his M.A. (1982) and PhD (1987) in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. His academic journey led him to teaching positions at prestigious institutions such as Harvard University and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
In 2000, Prof. Sax was appointed as the head of the Department of Anthropology at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, where he continues to be a leading figure in the fields of ritual, performance, and medical anthropology. His research primarily focuses on the anthropology of religion and medical ethnology, with a particular emphasis on the Western Himalayan region. His scholarly contributions include extensive studies on pilgrimage, gender, aesthetics, and ritual healing in South Asia.
Prof. William S. Sax has authored several significant monographs that explore various aspects of South Asian religion, culture, and society. Some of his key works include Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Central Himalayan Pilgrimage (1991), which examines the interplay of gender and political dynamics in a pilgrimage context; The Gods at Play: Lila in South Asia (1995), focusing on the concept of divine play in South Asian religious traditions; Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal (2002), which investigates the role of ritual theatre in shaping individual and collective identities; and God of Justice: Ritual Healing in the Central Himalayas (2009), a study of how ritual practices serve as mechanisms for justice and healing in the Himalayan region.
Research Projects
- Leader, Project C3, “Asymmetrical Translations: Mind and Body in European and Indian Medicine” in the research cluster Asia and Europe in a Global Context.
- Co-Leader (with Hans Harder), Project A8, “Border Rituals” In Special Research Area 619 Ritualdynamik.
- Co-Leader (with Marcus Nuesser), DFG Project NU 102/10-1 Changing Strategies of Resource Use: The “Bhotiyas” in the High Mountain Border Region of Uttarakhand, India.
- Co-Leader (with Axel Michaels), Project B14 “Staging Religion” in the research cluster Asia and Europe in a Global Context.
- Co-Leader (with Wolfgang Eckart), Project C5 “The Concept of Stress and Stress-Relief in a Transcultural Perspective: an ethno-epidemiological Study.” in the research cluster Asia and Europe in a Global Context.
Completed Projects
- 2002-2005 SFB 619 Teilprojekt A4: “Handlungspotential (agency) und territoriale Rituale in Indien”
- 2001-2005 DFG-Projekt SA 930/1-1 & 930/1-2: “Umstrittene Zentren: Konstruktion und Wandel sozio-kultureller Identitäten in der indischen Region Orissa”
- 2001-2005 DFG-Projekt SA 930/4-1 + 930/4-2: "Dokumentation eines Heilkultes im Zentral-Himalaya und dessen Analyse im Rahmen der "kritisch-interpretativen Medizinethnologie" und der "Performanz-Theorie"
2004 DFG 4850/92-04 Kongress-Zuschuss - “The Ills of Marginality: New Perspectives on Subaltern Health in South Asia”
- July 2005 - June 2009 SFB 619 Sub-Project A5 Ritual Healing and its Critics
- AROGYAM (Indian-European Research Networking Programme in the Social Sciences (ANR-DFG-ESRC-NOW) EUR €225,600
- Cluster of Excellence Mini-Cluster MC-11, 2012-2017, “Changing Minds: the transcultural production of human kinds” (a study of ritual, history, and the sciences of mind) EUR 829,250.00
Public Lectures
- “Ritual Healing” – One-week seminar, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, March 2009.
- “Shamanic Nosologies” – University of Bochum, June 2009; University of Arizona, December 2009.
- “Demonic Justice: A Case from the Court of Pokkhu Devta” – Münster, May 2009.
- “A Non-Modern Healing Practice” – University of Iowa, April 2010.
- “Religion, Possession, and the ‘Hysteresis Effect’: A Case Study from India” – University of Iowa, April 2010.
- “Power, Control, and Emotion in Garhwali Possession Rituals” – Goa, January 2010.
- “Mental Health in Developing Countries” – Munich, December 2010.
- “Mit Ritualen Heilen” – Berlin, May 2010.
- “Oracular Possession and the ‘Ideology of Absence’” – Vienna, November 2011; Paris, February 2012; Harvard, August 2012.
- “Transcultural Psychiatry” – Paris, May 2011; Ketchikan, Alaska, August 2012.
- “Discipline and Ecstasy: The Kandy and Kataragama Festivals in Sri Lanka” – Oslo, June 2011.
- “Therapeutic Possession as an Expression of Holism” – Heidelberg, November 2011.
- “Ritual Healing and Psychiatry in India” – Münster, February 2012; McGill University, July 2012; Harvard University, August 2012.
- “Divine Kingship and Distributed Agency” – IIAS Shimla, April 2012.
- “From Kautilya to Latour: Land and People in the Divine Kingdoms of Rawain” – IIAS Shimla, April 2012.
- “Performing God’s Body” – Zadar, Croatia, May 2012.
- “An Alternative Modernity in the Western Himalayas” – Vienna, June 2012.
- “Forgetting How to Be Possessed” – Paris, July 2012.
- “Family Unity and Ritual Healing” – Lisbon, July 2012.
- “Divine Kingdoms in the Western Himalayas: Oracular Authority and Distributed Agency” – Oxford, February 2013; Stanford, September 2015.
- “Global Mental Health—Promises and Pitfalls: The View from Ethnology” – Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, November 2013.
- “Anthropology Meets Psychiatry: The Cultural Epidemiology of Ritual Healing” – Emory University; Northern Arizona State University; University of California, Santa Barbara, April 2014; Freie Universität Berlin and Münster University, May 2014; Tallinn, Estonia, July 2014; Stanford, California, September 2015.
- Keynote Speech: “The Efficacy of Ritual” – INTAR conference, Liverpool, June 2014.
- “Ritual Healing in the Himalayas” – Budapest, July 2014.
- “Do Rituals Heal?” – Budapest, July 2014; Robert Bosch College (Freiburg), January 2016.
- “An Anthropological Critique of Psychiatric Epidemiology” – Zurich, July 2014.
- “The Birth of the (Exorcism) Clinic: Media, Modernity, and the Jinn” – Tübingen, July 2015; UC San Diego, October 2015.
- “Divine Kingship in the Western Himalaya” – University of Arizona, April 2017.
- “Outsourcing Possession: Media, Modernity, and the Jinn” – JNU (Delhi), November 2015; Durham University, February 2016; Columbia University, March 2018; Harvard University, March 2018.
- “The Ontology of the Gods of the Western Himalayas” – IUAES conference, Dubrovnik, May 2016.
- “Diagnosis by Ritual Healers” – MAAH conference, Norway, June 2015.
- “The Medicalization of Medical Anthropology” – Keynote address, Association of Social Anthropologists, UK, Durham, June 2015.
- “Global Mental Health and the Death of the Gods” – Malta, December 2016.
- “Songs of the Gods from the Western Himalayas” – Tel Aviv, June 2016.
- “Ontology of the Devtas” – Dubrovnik, May 2016.
- “The Efficacy of Ritual Healing” – Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil, June 2016; LEEA-CCH, Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil, July 2013.
- “Traditional Healing and Mental Health: An Anthropologist's View” – Keynote Address, Global Mental Health Symposium, Munich, October 2017.
- “The Gods of the Western Himalaya as Agents and as Intentional Beings” – Marçay, France, December 2017; Harvard University, March 2018; City University of New York, March 2018.
Contact
Department of Anthropology
South Asia Institute, Universität Heidelberg
Voßstraße 2, Building 4130
Room: 130.02.21
D-69115 Heidelberg
Phone: +49 (0) 6221 - 54 15 231
E-mail: william.sax@sai.uni-heidelberg.de
Consultation hours: by appointment via e-mail