Vera Lazzaretti studied Philosophy, Cultural Anthropology and Indology in Italy and holds a Ph.D. in Euro-Asian Studies—section of Indian and Tibetan Studies—from the University of Turin (2013). She is currently working on heritage in urban South Asia as part of the Heidelberg University flagship initiative on Transforming Cultural Heritage, and during her appointment she will be affiliated with both the South Asia Institute (Cultural and Religious History of South Asia Department) and the Heidelberg Centre for Cultural Heritage. Vera recently concluded a post-doctoral research period at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo, where she was part of the Indian Cosmopolitan Alternatives Project. Before that, Vera worked on the transposition of deities and places in contemporary Hinduism and conducted extensive ethnographic research among living practitioners of urban pilgrimage in Banaras (Varanasi). Prior to her appointment in Oslo, she was a teaching assistant and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Milan, and then a DAAD visiting scholar at the South Asia Institute in Heidelberg.