RESEARCH GROUPS
South Asian Medicine: The History and Social Understanding of Indigenous Medical Practice
Convenor: Dr. Dominik Wujastyk, Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London
This research group is interested in all aspects of indigenous South Asian medicine, including the intellectual history of pre-modern physicians, the history of Indian medical literature and medical theory, the social and anthropological dimensions of contemporary indigenous medical practice, and the ethno-botany of village medicine.
The group is an international conference of scholars, organised in a consciously co-operative, organic and non-hierarchical fashion. The geographical focus is non-specific, although several members are working on material in Ladakh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Active members of the group include (listed alphabetically):
- Guy Attewell (London)
- Philipp Maas (Vienna)
- G. Jan Meulenbeld (Groningen)
- Unnikrishnan Payappallimana (Bangalore)
- Laurent Pordié (Pondicherry)
- Karin Preisendanz (Vienna)
- Dagmar Wujastyk (neé Benner) (Cambridge)
- Dominik Wujastyk (London)
- Tsutomu Yamashita (Kyoto)
- Kenneth G. Zysk (Copenhagen)
Tibetan Medical Treatise, title page (above) and colophon. Courtesy of the British Museum, London
Publications
Members of the research group have a strong track-record of research publication, invited lectures and conference presentations relating to medical themes. Our leading publications are listed in the PDF file available from the box to the right.