Sarover Zaidi, 2011-2015

Sarover Zaidi was a doctoral research fellow at MPI-MMG with affiliation at the University of Utrecht. Her work focussed on religious architecture in Mumbai and its relationship to the wider neighbourhood, municipal planning and the urban space of the city. Working between theological architecture (especially the three Semitic religions), ghettoized neighbourhoods and the formation of city plans, she will look at the forms into which these expand and the social, the political and the pluralistic practice of religion in a cosmopolitan city.

She has submitted her M.Phil in Sociology (June, 2011) at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, on the idea of ‘experience’ and its relation to language and knowledge in social anthropology. She holds an MA in Sociology/Social Anthropology (2003) and has an undergraduate degree in Philosophy (2000).

She has worked in the field of public health for 8 years, looking specifically at issues of governance, health epistemologies, community health, evidence based medicine and public health education in India.

Her key interests are in religious studies specifically Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism and Sufism in south Asia, and also magic science and religion in Europe (renaissance studies). Besides this she is interested in working on theories of art, craft, local health traditions and science and technology studies.