Core team
Moumita Sen is an Associate Professor of Culture Studies at MF, Norwegian School of Theology, Religion, and Society, and the project lead for MYTHOPOL. Her forthcoming monograph The Mahishasur Movement in India: Caste, Religion, and Politics (Routledge, UK) focuses on the intersection of aesthetic discourse, popular religiosity, and organized politics in caste activism India. Her larger research interest is in the field of Indian visual culture. Her doctoral dissertation (2016) received the Norwegian king’s gold medal for ‘outstanding research’ in 2017. She is the co-editor of Nine Nights of the Goddess: The Navaratri Festival in South Asia (SUNY, 2018).
Silje Lyngar Einarsen is a postdoctoral fellow at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society on the project Mythopolitics in South Asia. She works at the intersection of classical Indology and contemporary South Asia studies. She is interested in the relationship between textual worldviews and lived religion and the role of Sanskrit in India historically and today. Her research interests also include Hindu Goddess traditions and the history of yoga. She is co-author of a Danish standard introduction to Hinduism and an upcoming new translation of the Haṭhapradīpikā.
Guro W. Samuelsen is a postdoctoral fellow at MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, and with Mythopolitics in South Asia. A scholar of political anthropology and contemporary South Asia, she is particularly interested in the relationship between political mobilisation and performativity. More broadly, her research interests are in questions of representation as they relate to caste, class, gender, and postcolonial democracy.
The’ang Teron is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in sociology and folklore studies. His current doctoral research analyses the new Karbi religious movement and its ritually-mediated world-making processes. His larger interest is in the role of Indian politics of majoritarianism among indigenous lifeworlds. His MA thesis (The Mosera Epics in Karbi Ritual: Documentation and Problem of Textualization) written at the University of Tartu was one of the first to use and translate the hitherto unexplored Karbi folklore into English for academic analysis. As an indigenous scholar, Teron is among the first doctoral scholars in his community. In addition to being an academic, Teron is a musician working with different genres.
Wona Lee is a research assistant and an active part of the MYTHOPOL project. She is currently a master’s student at the University of Oslo, studying classical studies. Her main research interests lie in the representation of Greek mythology in Greek bucolic and epic poetry. Her broader research interests include historiography, and mythological narratives in social, cultural, and political contexts with particular regard to displacement and self-identification.
Advisors and Collaborators:
Helge Jordheim (Professor, University of Oslo)
Kenneth George (Professor, Australian National University)
Kirin Narayan (Professor, Australian National University)
Arild Engelsen Ruud (Professor, University of Oslo)
Claus Peter Zoller (Professor, University of Oslo)
Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay (Associate Professor, University of Oslo)
Kristin Soraya Batmanghelichi (Associate Professor, University of Oslo)
Einar Wigen (Associate Professor, University of Oslo)
Alp Eren Topal (Marie Curie Fellow, University of Oslo)
Ragnhild Zorgati (Associate Professor, University of Oslo)
Ute Hüsken (Professor, University of Heidelberg)