Alberto Gomes is Professor of Anthropology at the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has published three books and numerous papers based on his ethnographic research on Malaysian Aborigines (Orang Asli).
John Bowen is the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. He studies problems of pluralism, law, and religion, and in particular contemporary efforts to rethink Islamic norms and law in Asia, Europe, and North America.
David Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology, a Fellow of All Souls, and Head of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. His doctoral research (1982-4) was on the traditional, Vajrayana Buddhism of the Newars and on Newar social organization, in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.
He has carried out fieldwork in the Kathmandu Valley on many subsequent occasions, broadening his interests to include politics and ethnicity, healers, mediums, and popular approaches to misfortune, religious change, activism, and democratization. His current research is on religion in the Nepali diaspora in the UK.
This workshop intends to further an anthropological understanding of the current political crisis in Thailand and the use of a symbolic repertoire by the different groups that are engaged in political struggle.
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Workshop with Chris Fuller (London School of Economics), Carol Upadhya (School of Social Sciences in Bangalore, Indien) and Nicole Mayer-Ahuja (Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen - SOFI)
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Tansen Sen is Associate Professor of Asian history and religons at Baruch College, The City University of New York. Currently he is visiting senior research fellow at the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. He received his MA from Peking University and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. He has special scholarly interests in Buddhism, Sino-Indian relations, Indian Ocean trade, and Silk Road archeology. He has done extensive research in India, China, and Japan with grants from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Japan Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.