Martin Gaenszle is Professor in Cultural and Intellectual History of Modern South Asia in the Department of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Heidelberg where he also studied Indology and Philosophy. From 1987 to 1993, he was Resident Representative of the South Asia Institute (University of Heidelberg) in Kathmandu, Nepal. Since 1984, he has been involved in field research in eastern Nepal and North India (Banaras). His scholarly interests include religious pluralism, ethnicity, local history, and oral traditions in South Asia, in particular the Himalayan region. A major research focus is the study of Kiranti religion and its transformations in the contemporary world. He is the author of Origins and Migrations: Kinship, Mythology and Ethnic Identity Among the Mewahang Rai (Mandala Book Point, 2000) and Ancestral Voices: Oral Ritual Texts and their Social Contexts among the Mewahang Rai of East Nepal (LIT Verlag, 2002).