▍ Welcome to Dr. Valeria Gazizova

The Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia is pleased to welcome Dr. Valeria Gazizova. Valeria Gazizova is a scholar of Mongol and Tibetan religions, specialising in the history and anthropology of Buddhism and forms of popular worship among the Mongols of Russia in late modern and contemporary times. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research on religious transformations, new vernacular spiritualities and ritual healers in postsocialist Kalmykia, southwest Russia. She has MPhil in Tibetan Studies and PhD in History of religions from the University of Oslo, the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages. Prior to her appointment at Heidelberg University, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Cambridge, the Department of Social Anthropology (Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit).

As a DAAD PRIME fellow at the South Asia Institute (the Department of Cultural and Religious History of South Asia), Dr. Gazizova will be working on the project ‘Secret lamas of the Soviet era and their female lineage holders: Gender dynamics in Kalmyk Buddhism since late socialism to the present’, exploring the relationship between secrecy and female religious agency in the conditions of state suppression and to what extent the continuity of a religious tradition can be maintained through transformations involving changed gender roles.