Faculty

Lucy May Constantini is a dance-artist turned scholar who first encountered the South Indian martial art kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘ in 2002 during a residential dance workshop in South India. She went on to train extensively in kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘ at CVN Kalari Sangham in Thiruvananthapuram. In 2012 she was initiated into and apprenticed in kaḷaricikilsa, kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘’s therapeutic system. She was awarded with distinction a masters in South Asia Area Studies from SOAS, University of London in 2018, and recently submitted her PhD thesis in the School of Religious Studies at the Open University in the UK. This was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership and supported by the École française d'Extrême-Orient in Pondicherry. Lucy’s research was co-created with the lineage-holder of CVN Kalari Sangham and explores the relationship between practice and textual traditions in kaḷarippayaṟṟ˘. Her interdisciplinary research encompasses ethnography, drawing on the relationship since 2002 with CVN Kalari in Thiruvananthapuram, and the study of manuscripts in Malayalam. Her research methodology draws on her background in dance and somatic practices, where her work investigates the confluence of her praxes of postmodern dance, martial arts and yoga.

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