37. How do Academics Study Yoga?
Yoga Studies in Five Minutes - Theodora Wildcroft
Karen O'Brien Kop [+]
King's College London
Karen O’Brien-Kop is Lecturer in Asian Religions at King’s College London and acquired
her PhD from SOAS University of London. She researches philosophy of mind, asceticism, and Sanskrit texts in Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Her books include: Rethinking ‘Classical Yoga’ and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphors and Materiality (2022, Bloomsbury) and The Philosophy of the Yogasutra (2023, Bloomsbury) and the co-edited volume The Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies (2021, Routledge).
Description
Until the latter parts of the 20th century, much academic research on yoga was concentrated on historical methods. Arguably, as its global distribution and development proliferates, yoga today is a topic and phenomenon that can be approached through almost any academic lens, discipline or method that looks at human beliefs, practices, thought or culture in history or today.