Thematic Research Projects

How has the Bhagavad Gītā been read across philosophy, yoga, aesthetics and literature, and what does each reading do with its central call to act without clinging to the fruit of action?

The Bhagavad Gītā is among the most commented-on texts in the world, yet it is rarely followed as a single question across disciplines. This project gathers Poo...

How does the Nāṭyaśāstra work as a philosophy of the embodied, performing body (nāṭya, rasa, the “extra-daily”), and how have later thinkers, performers and critics extended, reinterpreted or tested it?

The Nāṭyaśāstra is usually introduced as the oldest treatise on Indian theatre, dance and music. This project follows a second question: what does it assume abo...

Is Bengal Vaiṣṇava devotion best understood as a theology, an aesthetics, or a practice of place?

Bengal Vaiṣṇavism is usually approached through its theology or its history. This project follows a different thread: how devotion becomes perceptible. It bring...

If the self is not a fixed, private owner of experience (as Buddhist, phenomenological, externalist and literary accounts each suggest), who is responsible for what a mind does?

Moral life seems to assume a stable self that acts, chooses and answers for its actions. Yet philosophy, in India and elsewhere, has repeatedly questioned that ...