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Lecturer
work
+44 (0)1224 272274
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w.t.douglas@abdn.ac.uk
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School of Divinity, History and Philosophy,
King's College,
University of Aberdeen,
Aberdeen
AB24 3UB
** On research leave July 2010 - January 2013 **
Autumn 2010, TLKY Distinguished Visiting Professor in Buddhist Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough.
2011 - 2012, Wellcome Trust research leave in the Himalayas.
Lecturer
BA (Reed), MA (Chicago), MPhil (Oxford), DPhil (Oxford)
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Personal Details
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I'm a South Asia and Himalayan area specialist, by training an anthropologist. My work covers three broad areas:
I draw on both fieldwork and archival research. Having trained at Oxford with anthropologists who used classical languages as well as vernaculars, I value the contextual and historical depth that offers. In my DPhil research I was able to work with Vajrayana Sanskrit pandits in part because I was able to work with them on reconstructing lost Sanskrit sources—thus, in effect, using Sanskrit skills as part of participant observation conducted in modern Newari and Nepali.
After finishing the book of the DPhil, I recovered an earlier interest in ecology and have made detailed social and ecological studies of particular species (bats, lapsi trees, shrews, dogs), in order to understand how they form part of an environment mutual constructed with human society. The critical stance of medical anthropology and political ecology are crucial for engaged fieldwork; the toolkit of ethnoecology is helpful for picking apart the heteregenous and often conflicting attitudes and behaviours that accumulate around particular ecosystems, species, medical practices or places.
The Mahayana Buddhism that I have studied together with my informants considers humans, animals and deities equally to be persons, and pursues on a rigorous anti-essentialism. Both are valuable moves in the development of a critical environmental-anthropological method.
My fieldwork has to date been conducted with Newar and Tibetan Buddhists in Nepal, India, California and the UK. I have used Newari, Nepali, Tibetan and Spanish for my fieldwork, and read texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan and Newari.
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Present projects include a study of the environment, ethnicity, caste and religion around Pharping; an ethnography of the category ‘religion’ in a non-Western university; and a history of the Newar Baniyas (traditional medicine merchants) and the interethnic ethnoecological and commercial networks they sustained right across the central Himalayas.
I am seeking funding to further investigate the conflict between how ‘big medicine’ research establishments construct zoonotic epidemics and how forest edge communities regard animals as the causes of disease. In particular, the rather simplistic construction of bats as the carriers for a wide range of feared zoonoses such as SARS, Marburg, and Nipah seems to me an excellent example of a poorly understood commensal becoming a hated internal other for the cosmopolitan epidemiology/public health community, and has remarkable similarities to wichcraft accusations in the premodern period.
Broader problems on which I am working include understanding the Himalayas as a region; formulating method for properly historical ethnoecology; the relationship between textual canons, ecosystems and trade routes; how rituals and technology interact; and what shape Buddhism can and should take in a global context.
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The Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research is a network of Himalayanists covering a wide range of disciplines, from Anthropology to Zoology. We collaborate on teaching, research and grant proposals. Our annual conference is usually in Edinburgh in the spring.
I am presently working with the Lubee Bat Conservancy on documenting human predation on bats, and working with the IUCN panel on Sacred Species. Together with Rick Stepp and Bron Tylor, I am organising a conference on ethnobiology and the construction of religion to be held in Florida in November 2010
I am a member of the Society for Conservation Biology's working groups on Social Sciences and Religion and Conservation.
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| Year | Course | Coordinator |
| 1 | Introducing World Religions: Hinduism | |
| 1 | Gender and Religions: Gender and Ritual | C |
| (The first year curriculum is being redesigned for 2010-11) | ||
| 2 | Encountering Buddhism | C |
| 3 | Buddhist Philosophy: Mahayana theory and practice | C |
| 3 | Indigenous and traditional systems of medicine | C |
| 4 | Conquer, Cure or Liberate: The beginning and ends of Vajrayana | C |
| 4 | Making Sacred Landscapes | C |
| 5 | Himalayan Studies I (modules vary) | |
| 5 | Himalayan Studies II (modules vary) | C |
| 5 | Himalayan Ethnobotany | C |
I also teach ...
| ethnobotany | for the BSc and MSc in Plant Science at the University of Edinburgh/Edinburgh Botanics |
| ‘Religion’ and ‘Environmentality’ | for Religion and the Secular |
| ‘Susto and indigeneity’ | for the MLitt on Hispanic studies |
Programme Coordinator for MRes Himalayan Studies, MSc Himalayan Ethnobotany
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I edited the European Bulletin of Himalayan Research from 1998-2001 and was reviews editor for H-Buddhism in 2002-3. I am now on the editorial board of Buddhist Studies Review and am the Thakali for the Pasa Puca Guthi (Newar Friendly Association) Scotland as well as doing peer review for a number of journals and research bodies.
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2010 Keynote speaker for TLKY conference on Buddhism in Diaspora, University of Toronto.
2009 Numata lecture, University of Toronto. 'A Buddhist anthropology of Newar religion: Gaṇeśa, his mount, and their landscape.'
2008Anthropology in Development Seminar, Durham University. ‘Bats, Ethnobiology and Zoonotic Disease’
2008 Chair, Newar Buddhism panel, American Academy of Religion
2007 Workshop: 'Eating Bats to Extinction'. 1st Southeast Asian Bat conference, Phuket, Thailand.
2007 Numata lecture, Institute for Buddhist Studies, Berkeley. 'Avalokitesvara is Everyone.'
2005 Convener, Newar Buddhism panel, IABS 2005 London.
1998 Chair, Buddhist Heritage of Nepal Mandala conference,
Kathmandu, for which I also presented ‘The Literary Sources of the
Gunakarandavyuha’ (proceedings published in Newari).
1995 Organizer, InterDoc 1995. London.
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| when | where |
| 2006-7 | Nepal |
| 2001-3 | Nepal |
| 2000 | India: Tibetan refugee monasteries |
| 1996 | India: Sanskrit study, Pune |
| 1995 | Nepal, Bangladesh |
| 1992 | Nepal |
| 1992-5 | Los Angeles, Chicago: immigrant Buddhism |
| 1989 | Guatemala |
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I would be happy to consider PhD proposals on ethnobiology; on Himalayan topics linking ecology and anthropology; on the anthropology of Buddhist societies; or on the anthropology of religion in virtual worlds.
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