University of Heidelberg

Dr. Sheela Saravanan

Dr. Sheela Saravanan Dr. Sheela Saravanan

Position

  • Research associate

Contact information

Heidelberg University
South Asia Institute
Department of Anthropology
Im Neuenheimer Feld 330, Room 502
69120 Heidelberg
Germany

DFG project "Wunschkinder"
E-Mail: sheela.saravanan@uni-heidelberg.de
Phone: +49 6221 54-8848

Short biography

Dr. Sheela Saravanan has two Master’s degrees from the Indian Universities of Bombay and Pune in Geography and Development Planning. Her PhD thesis in Public Health from Queensland University of Technology, Australia was on the influence of biomedical frameworks of knowledge on local birthing practices in India. She has worked and published on the status of reproductive health in South Asia, violence against women and female infanticide in India. Since 2009 her research work in the German Universities of Heidelberg and Goettingen has focused on gender and assisted reproductive technologies in the context of Asia and Europe. She has widely published on commercial surrogacy in India from a feminist, global inequalities and reproductive justice perspective. Theoretically she has drawn on critical medical anthropology; Lock and Scheper-Hughes ‘mindful body’, theories of global justice and feminist theories of reproductive justice, transnational feminism and intersectionality in the context of commercial surrogacy in India. In her PhD thesis, she applied Jordan’s (1993) concept of ‘authoritative knowledge’ to assess the extent to which there is a synthesis of both biomedical and locally practiced knowledge in the design and content of TBA (Traditional Birth Attendant) training in India. She is presently working on a DFG funded project titled ‘A study of ‘desired children’ in Germany and India as a context leading to prenatal genetic diagnosis and selective abortions’. In this research on prenatal diagnosis she has applied Lock and Scheper-Hughes ‘mindful body’ in examining the notions of Wunschkinder in Germany and India. She has been teaching ‘Theories and Practice and Socio-ethics of Assisted Reproductive Technologies’, ‘Feminism and Public Health’ and ‘Gendered Embodiment of Complementary Medicine’ to Master’s and Bachelor students at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University.

 Inhalte rechte Spalte
Centre for
Asian and
Transcultural
Studies

Ethnology in Heidelberg
News
Conferences, Publications and external lectures

The department on events
read more...

Recent Publications
Article

Moral Challenges at the Intersection of Religion, Politics, and COVID-19 in Pakistan.

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Article

Second publication in the FID4SA of Universität Heidelberg:

Andaman Loves: Marriage Practies, Secularism, and Alternative Modernities in the Age of Globalization.

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Can migrants be indigenous?
Affirmative action, space and belonging in the Andaman Islands.

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Article

Bringing Subalterns into Speech?
Investigating Anarchic Resistance to Hegemonic Modernity

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Article PDF

Book Chapter

The Routledge Handbook of Refugees in India

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Website

Book Chapter

Energies Beyond the State:
Anarchist Political Ecology and the Liberation of Nature

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Website

Book

The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia

(Ed.) Prof. Dr. William Sax with Claudia Lang

Website

Book

Unani Medicine in the Making:
Practices and Respresentations in 21st-century

Dr. Kira Schmidt Stiedenroth

Website

Book Chapter

Patriots in Kala Pani:
Writing Subaltern Resistance into the National Memory

Dr. Philipp Zehmisch

Website

Artikel

2018. Reviving “A forgotten Sunna:” Hijamah (cupping therapy), prophetic medicine, and the re-Islamization of Unani medicine in contemporary India

Dr. Kira Schmidt Stiedenroth

Zum Artikel

Kapitel

2018. "We are like the river water, always flowing" : some urban nomads of Delhi. In: Soziale Ästhetik, Atmosphäre, Medialität

Prof. Dr. William Sax

Zur UB Heidelberg