University of Heidelberg

Sophie-Anne Perkins

Sophie-Anne Perkins

Sophie-Anne Perkins is from Montreal, Canada, where she completed her undergraduate degree in Honours Religion at Concordia University in 2012. During that degree, she focused as much as possible on Indo-Tibetan ascetic practices, such as yoga and tantrism, because she was especially intrigued by their taboo nature which reverses social norms and their esoteric perspectives on consciousness, the body, and the subtle body. Her academic interests have therefore tended towards: embodied experiences and practices which are informed by a religious or spiritual worldview and which provide the individual with a meaningful understanding of their self in relation to the world; their practical application as means of achieving health and healing; and the impact which multicultural interactions, colonialism, and modern science have had on their development in both traditional and global settings. In the summer of 2011, she spent 3 inspiring months in a study exchange at the Vivekananda Institute of Indian Studies in Mysore, Karnataka, where she was taught introductory Hindi, Indian gender relations and sexuality, and pre-modern Indian history. MAHASSA's curriculum is perfectly suited to her research needs and will provide her with the proper tools to shift from a textual or theoretical approach, to an anthropologically applied one.

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