Contributors

Prof. Nalini Balbir

is Professor of Indology at the University of Paris-3 Sorbonne-Nouvelle. Her main fields of research are Pāli and Jain studies (http://www.iran-inde.cnrs.fr/IMG/pdf/publNBalbir.pdf). Among her recent publications on various facets of Jainism are an introductory essay to the English translation of E. Leumann’s Übersicht über die Āvaśyaka-Literatur by G. Baurmann (Ahmedabad, L.D. Institute of Indology, 2010), a translation of Ācārya Nemicandra Dravyasaṃgraha (Mumbai : Hindi Granth Karyalay, 2010) and Paṭadarśana (Tīrthaṃkara praṇīta dharmadeśanā antargata Śatruṃjaya māhātmya). The glory of Shatrunjya as depicted in a 19th Century Jain scroll (Ladnun : Jain Vishva Bharati University, 2010 ; with Dr. K.K. Sheth). Co-author with K.V. Sheth, K.K. Sheth and C.B. Tripathi of the Catalogue of the Jain Manuscritpts of the British Library (British Library, Institute of Indology, 3 vols., 2006), she is at present the Editor in Chief of the Jainpedia website project which provides description of digitized images of Jain manuscripts in UK, together with an encyclopedia of Jainism (http://www.jainology.org/jainpedia/). She is intensely engaged in the study of the Jain manuscript tradition, focussing on the ways text and illustration interact to produce meaning. 

Prof. Julia Hegewald

is Head of Department of Asian and Islamic Art History in the Institute for Oriental and Asian Studies (IOA) at the University of Bonn. She is director of the Emmy Noether Research Project on Jainism in Karnataka, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). She has been a Reader in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester (2007-2010), a postdoctoral Fellow at the South Asia Institute (SAI) at Heidelberg University (2005-2007), and a Research Fellow at University College Oxford (1998-2005). She graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, from where she also holds a PhD. Her books are Water Architecture in South Asia: A Study of Types, Developments and Meanings (Brill, 2002), Jaina Temple Architecture in India: The Development of a Distinct Language in Space and Ritual (G+H Verlag, 2009) and The Jaina Heritage: Distinction, Decline and Resilience (Samskriti 2010).

Regina Höfer (M.A.)

Studies in Indian and Tibetan Art History, Philosophy, Tibetan and Religious Studies at University of Bonn and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; different occupations in the museum- and culture sector; former assistant curator at the Asian Art Museum, South, Southeast and Central Asian Art Collections, National Museums in Berlin; former research associate and lecturer at the Institute of the History of Art, University of Vienna and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asian Cultural History. Currently research associate and lecturer at the Department of Asian and Islamic Art History, University of Bonn. 

Research interests: Indian and Tibetan Buddhist art, historical Indian photography, Global Art, modern and contemporary Tibetan and Indian art, museum theory, traditions of collecting Asian art / museums in Asia, Indian aesthetics, visual ethnology.

Homepage: http://ghilman.ioa.uni-bonn.de/~aikhiwi/Hoefer_de/

Dr. Jennifer Howes

is Curator of Visual Arts at the British Library. Specialising in the visual culture of British India, her most recent book, 'Illustrating India: The Early Colonial Investigations of Colin Mackenzie (1784-1821)' was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Other recent publications have looked at the historiography of monuments at Mahabalipuram (2009) and at Amaravati (2002, 2009). Her PhD on South Indian palace architecture and painting was obtained from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1999, and was published by Routledge in 2003.

Prof. Ciro Lo Muzio

PhD (Doctorate of Research) in History of Central Asian Art, Genoa University (dissertation title: "The Iconography of Shiva in Central Asia")

Now Researcher (Assistant Professor) in Indian and Central Asian Archaeology and Art History, in the Istituto Italiano di Studi Orientali, Sapienza Università di Roma.

Director of the Uzbek-Italian Archaeological Mission in the Bukhara Oasis (Uzbekistan).

The main field of my scientific research is Central Asian iconography, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist; I often deal with Gandharan art as well

Dr. Petra Hildegard Rösch

proesch@sino.uni-heidelberg.de ; roesch@museenkoeln.de

08.03.2005 Promotion Ostasiatische Kunstgeschichte, Europäische Kunstgeschichte, Sinologie II. Thema der Dissertation: “Chinese Wood sculptures of the 11th to 13th centuries: Images of Water-moon Guanyin in Northern Chinese Temples and Western Collections”.

Dozentin an der Ritsumeikan APU Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan, Mitglied im DFG-Netzwerk Bildphilosophie. Seit Mai 2009 Kuratorin für Buddhistische Kunst/stellv. Direktorin am Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst Köln

Kürzlich gehaltene Vorträge:

-15.11.2010 Seoul Myongji University: Buddha names and rituals of Confession in East Asia

-16.04. 2011 EKO-Haus Düsseldorf, Tagung Wort und Bild: Die visuellen Kulturen im chinesischen Buddhismus: die Bild- und Wortebene der Chen Hailong Stele.

Auswahl an neueren Publikationen:

-„Vergehen reinigen und Verdienste erwerben: Die Familie Chen stiftet eine Buddhistische Stele“. / „Bilder in Ritualen“ / „Bilder von Ritualen: Narrativer und symbolischer Gehalt in bildlichen Darstellungen“. In: Ambos, Claus, Rösch, Petra, Schneidmüller, Bernd und Weinfurter, Stefan (Hg.): Bild und Ritual-Visuelle Kulturen in historischer Perspektive.Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010, 29-42/7-9/145-147.

-“Pillars of Faith: Visuality in space and ritual practice.” In: C. Wessels-Mevissen. In: Proceedings of the international conference (29th of September to 2nd of October) ‘Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual’. 2011, 537-566.

-„Die koreanische Sammlung des Museums für Ostasiatische Kunst in Köln / The Korean Collection of the Museum of East Asian Art Cologne“. In: Entdeckung Korea! Schätze aus deutschen Museen / Korea Rediscovered! Treasures from German Museums, ed. by the Korea Foundation. Seoul: Culture Books, 2011, 100-125.

Forschungschwerpunkte: Buddhistische Beichtrituale an chinesischen Höhlentempeln, Medien und materielle Kultur in religiösen Kontexten, Koreanische Kunst und Sammlungsgeschichte

Dr. William Southworth

studied the history, anthropology and archaeology of Southeast Asia at Hull University and at the Institute of Archaeology, London (UCL), gaining a doctorate at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in 2001 on the early Campā culture of central Vietnam. He has travelled extensively in the region and was a founding fellow of the Centre for Khmer Studies in Siem Reap, Cambodia between 1999 and 2002. After teaching two courses on early Southeast Asia at the University of Bonn, he became a fellow of the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) in Leiden in 2004-2005, researching in particular finds of Buddhist statuary in Java and Sumatra and their relations to mainland Southeast Asia. He has since contributed to the Corpus des Inscriptions de Campā (CIC), a research project run by the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in Jakarta and is now Curator of Southeast Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Dr. Eva-Maria Troelenberg

Platz fü(Dr. phil. 2010, LMU Munich) is a postdoc research fellow in the scholars-in-residence programme “Connecting Art Histories in the Museum”, a cooperation of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz / Max Planck Institute. Her main fields of interest include Orientalism in art, history of scholarship on the arts of Islam in the West and the epistemics of transcultural reception processes in art and art history. She was academic consultant and main catalogue author for the exhibition The Future of Tradition: the Tradition of Future in Haus der Kunst in Munich (2010). Her current research project Keystones of Islamic Art – Mshatta in Berlin is focused on the modern reception history of a centrepiece in the collection of the Museum of Islamic art in Berlin.

Parul Dave Mukherji abstract

Who is afraid of Utopia? Contemporary Indian Artists and Their Retakes on “Golden” age
                                                                                                                              

In contemporary Indian art, utopia emerges as one of the most contested terrains. If under the national modern, golden past was often invoked via the mythic imaginary, contemporary artists return to it in an ironic mode that often narrows the gap between utopia and dystopia. When Sheela Gowda revisits Mahabharata creating a minimalist allegory in Draupadi, it marks itself different from a more joyous celebration of the epics in M F Hussain’s Sita and Lakshmi. However, in more recent art practice, attention shifts from epic narrative to a more interactive space of community and the possibility of imagining a perfect social/political order. From a complete rejection of utopia (Raqs Media Collective) to its strategic embrace (Gigi Scaria), I will offer a brief overview of some contemporary artists to foreground deep ambivalence and disenchantment towards the idea of a golden past.

Dr. Sarah Shaw

Sarah Shaw read Greek and English at Manchester University before taking a doctorate there in English Literature. After studying Pali and Sanskrit at Oxford University she now works and teaches on early Buddhist narrative and meditative literature, with a particular emphasis on Jatakas. She has written several books on these subjects, including a Penguin Classic translation of a selection of Jatakas, locating the depiction of these stories in the context of traditional temple mural art. She is currently translating and researching acritical translation of the Mahanipita, the last ten Jatakas, the most popular themes in Southeast and South Asian temple art, with Dr Naomi Appleton of Cardiff University, and is working on a Treasures of the Bodleian Library book with Dr Naomi Appleton and Professor Toshiya Unebe of Nagoya University, based on an illustrated eighteenth-century Khmer folding book. Other current projects include a book on early Buddhist meditative literature and narrative for Yale UniversityPress. She is an honorary fellow of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, and a member of Wolfson College.

Dr. Tiziana Lorenzetti

A Graduated and Major from the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Dr. Lorenzetti  obtained her  Ph. D.  (Doctorate) in ‘History of the Art of India and Oriental Asia’ from  the ‘University of Genoa’.

She attended Post Doctoral Studies at the ‘National Museum Institute of History of Art’ of New Delhi, under the aegis of the Indian Council For Cultural Relations (I.C.C.R).

Lecturer  in Indian Art an Culture at the Sapienza of Rome, Research Associate at the University of Manchester, School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, she currently holds a tenure as professor at the ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome,  Department of History, Cultures and Religions. 

She has carried out a number of surveys in many states of India, collaborating on scientific missions regarding ‘the evaluation of the India’s cultural and environmental heritage’ under the aegis of the Italian Ministry of University and Scientific Research (MIUR). 

She also collaborates with a number Italian, European and Indian Universities and Institutions.

Among the publications, a number of articles, monographs and two books, dedicated to the sculptures in the Archeological Museum of Khajuraho (Indika Books  Calcutta/ Delhi 2000), and to  the symbolism and form of the Hindu Temple

 ( Il Nuovo Ramusio,  Is.IAO, Roma 2007).