Faculty

Daniela Bevilacqua is a South-Asianist who received her PhD in Civilizations of Africa and Asia from Sapienza University of Rome and in Anthropology from the University of Paris Nanterre. Her PhD research was published by Routledge under the title, Modern Hindu Traditionalism in Contemporary India: The Śrī Maṭh and the Jagadguru Rāmānandācārya in the Evolution of the Rāmānandī Sampradāya. She is now a Post-Doc Research Fellow at SOAS, working for the ERC-funded Hatha Yoga Project (2015-2020).

Through her groundbreaking fieldwork in India, she looks at the present practices of Haṭha Yoga among sādhus belonging to “traditional” samprādayas connected with the physical practice of yoga and with austerities. The purpose of this research is to confront ethnographic material with textual and historical evidences to reconstruct the development of these practices.

Courses taught: 

• YS 103 | Yoga and Hindu Asceticism, From Past to Present
• YS 103 | Yoga e Ascetismo Hindu, Dal Passato al Presente

Selected Publications: 

• 2024. From Tapas to Modern Yoga: Sādhus’ Understanding of Embodied Practices. Equinox. 
• 2018. Modern Hindu Traditionalism in Contemporary India: The Śrī Maṭh and the Jagadguru Rāmānandācārya in the Evolution of the Ramanandi Sampradaya. Routledge. 
• 2018. Changing the narration, adjusting the order: The independence of the Rāmānandī sampradāya and the bestowing of the title of Jagadguru Rāmānandācārya. Rivista degli Studi Orientali (Nuova Serie) (XCI), 2: 13-26.
• 2018. "Let the Sādhus Talk. Ascetic understanding of Haṭha Yoga and yogāsanas." Religions of South Asia 11:2, 182-206.
• 2017. "Are women entitled to become ascetics? An historical and ethnographic glimpse on female asceticism in Hindu religions." Kervan International Journal of Afro-Asiatic Studies, 21, 51-79.