Oral Tradition Volume 30, Number 2October 2016
About the Authors
Anne de Sales
Anne de Sales is an anthropologist, who holds the position of Senior Researcher in the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her publications on Nepal include a monograph on an ethnic minority, the Kham-Magar, and numerous articles on shamanic practices and oral literature. Since 1999 her publications have also addressed a range of anthropological issues concerning the impact of the Maoist insurrection on rural Nepal.
Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
Marie Lecomte-Tilouine is senior researcher at Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie and member of the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale, Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie/École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales/Collège de France, Paris, France. She has coordinated several collective research programs in Nepal and the Western Himalayas (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh). She is presently heading, in collaboration with Anne de Sales, a program on the modalities of “presentification” (or production of presence) of invisible powers in the Himalaya, funded by the French National Agency for Research (ANR). Her books include: Hindu Kingship, Ethnic Revival and Maoist Rebellion in Nepal (2009), Bards and Mediums: History, Culture and Politics in the Central himalayan Kingdoms (2009), Nature, Culture and Religion at the Crossroads of Asia (2010), and Revolution in Nepal: An Anthropological and Historical Approach to the People's War (2013).
John Leavitt
John Leavitt teaches linguistic anthropology in the Anthropology Department at the Université de Montréal. He has conducted field research on oral poetry in northern India and in Ireland. He has published on this work, on comparative mythology, and on the implications of linguistic diversity. His book, Linguistic Relativities: Language Diversity and Modern Thought, was published in 2011.
Marie Lecomte-Tilouine
Marie Lecomte-Tilouine is senior researcher at Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie and member of the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale, Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie/École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales/Collège de France, Paris, France. She has coordinated several collective research programs in Nepal and the Western Himalayas (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh). She is presently heading, in collaboration with Anne de Sales, a program on the modalities of “presentification” (or production of presence) of invisible powers in the Himalaya, funded by the French National Agency for Research (ANR). Her books include: Hindu Kingship, Ethnic Revival and Maoist Rebellion in Nepal (2009), Bards and Mediums: History, Culture and Politics in the Central himalayan Kingdoms (2009), Nature, Culture and Religion at the Crossroads of Asia (2010), and Revolution in Nepal: An Anthropological and Historical Approach to the People's War (2013).
Anne de Sales
Anne de Sales is an anthropologist, who holds the position of Senior Researcher in the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her publications on Nepal include a monograph on an ethnic minority, the Kham-Magar, and numerous articles on shamanic practices and oral literature. Since 1999 her publications have also addressed a range of anthropological issues concerning the impact of the Maoist insurrection on rural Nepal.
Martin Gaenszle
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).
Franck Bernède
Franck Bernède is a cellist and ethnomusicologist based in Nepal. In addition to his musical career, his academic research in India and Nepal focus for almost 30 years on the Bardic traditions of Central Himalayas and Newari music of Kathmandu Valley. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnomusicology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris). He is the founder and Director of the Singhini Research Centre, a Nepalese organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the traditional music and dance of the Himalayas.
Christian Jahoda
Christian Jahoda is a social anthropologist specializing in Tibetan society at the Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. He is the author of Socio-economic Organisation in a Border Area of Tibetan Culture: Tabo, Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India (ÖAW, 2015) and, with Tsering Gyalpo, Christiane Kalantari, and Patrick Sutherland, the author of Khorchag, a trilingual monograph on the history and cultural traditions at Khorchag (Purang) in Western Tibet (ÖAW, 2015).
Daniela Berti
Daniela Berti is a social anthropologist and research fellow at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris, and a member of the Centre for Himalayan Studies (CEH), Villejuif. She is co-editor of The Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva: Local Mediations and Forms of Resistance (2011) (with N. Jaoul and P. Kanungo), Of Doubt and Proof: Ritual and Legal Practices of Judgment (2015) (with A. Good and G. Tarabout), and Regimes of Legalities: Ethnography of Criminal Cases in South Asia (2015) (with D. Bordia). She has recently started a project on the courts’ management of environmental and animal protection.
Barbara Berardi Tadié
Barbara Berardi Tadié is a Ph.D. student in Social Anthropology and Ethnology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHEES) in Paris, and an associate researcher at the Centre d’Études Himalayennes (CEH-CNRS) and Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud (CEIAS-CNRS). Her research focuses on human rights, civil society associations, and justice in Nepal. One of her publications (“Discorsi giuridici e tecnologie sociali in Nepal: analisi di un contenzioso strategico,” in A. De Lauri (ed.), 2013, Antropologia giuridica, Mondadori Università) also deals with Public Interest Litigations and gender rights in Nepal. She has also worked for international NGOs in Nepal and Yemen.
Pustak Ghimire
Pustak Ghimire is a researcher at Centre de Recherche en Ethnomusicologie Nanterre, France, on an Agence Nationale de la Recherche program (“Making invisible powers present in the Himalayas”). His Ph.D. dissertation (2010 École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) dealt with hierarchies, conflicting values and recomposed identities in a locality in the hills of eastern Nepal. His current research focuses on rural violence, power-justice and social regulations, the impact of migration, modernity and globalization, inter-ethnic and inter-caste relations, and the mutations of religious feeling in Nepal. His forthcoming book, Contested Primacies, is to be published in 2016. He currently teaches Nêpali culture, literature, and society at National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO) Paris.
