Person

My research, which is historical and philological in a broad sense, concerns two main areas: the indigenous religions of India – in particular, classical and modern Hinduism – and the development and intercultural transmission of horoscopic astrology. Within the latter field of research, occupying the borderland between the historiographies of science and religion and of immense importance for global intellectual history, I have endeavoured to move beyond the common discourse of ‘western esotericism’ to include the much-neglected contributions of South Asia and a plurality of intellectual contexts. In 2020, my latest major research project (with Professor Olle Qvarnström) resulted in the Open Access publication of my critical edition/translation of the Hāyanaratna (The Jewel of Annual Astrology), an encyclopaedic 17th-century work on Sanskritized Perso-Arabic (Tājika) astrology authored by Balabhadra Daivajña, court astrologer to the Mughal prince Shāh Shujāʿ.