SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Department of History and Anthropology of Religion; Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University:

Address: Allhelgona Kyrkogata 8, 223 62 Lund, Sweden
Web page: http://www.teol.lu.se/indiskareligioner/

Contact person: Professor Olle Qvarnström, phone +46 (0)46 222 90 45

New discipline under way/courses on Indic religions

At the Department of History and Anthropology of Religion, Lund University, the establishment of a new discipline of Indic Religions is under way. Its aim is to offer undergraduate courses from 1 to 80 credits as well as a PhD programme, keeping a marked interdisciplinary profile. The Faculties of Humanities and Theology at Lund University on 16 May 2003 decided to establish a new professorship in History of Religions, concentrated on Indic religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism).
In May 2005 Lund University appointed Olle Qvarnström Professor in History of Religion with special emphasis on Indic Religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism), to head the emerging Indic Religions Division. He was installed as Professor on Friday 21 October 2005.
Indic Religions is a major contribution to the overall effort of Lund University to promote research and education on South Asia. It focuses on the study of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism.
This divison, the first of its kind at a Swedish university, plans for courses up to D-level, Masters level courses and PhD training.

On 11 February 2010, the Vice Chancellors at Lund University (LU) and the University of Gothenburg (GU) decided to give grants to a number of joint projects in order to strenghten the collaboration between the two universities. More information (only in Swedish).
One of the projects relates to the establishment of a strong national platform for the study of South Asian religions at LU and GU. An application for this project came from the Dept. of History and Anthropology of Religion (through Prof. Olle Qvarnström and Dr. Kristina Myrvold), and the Dept. of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion (LIR), University of Gothenburg (through Prof. Åke Sander, Dr. Daniel Andersson and Dr. Clemens Cavallin).
The grant /SEK 150 000) will be used to develop cooperation in education, course work and research, and to formalise and make common their already existing exchange programmes with three North Indian universities, Punjabi University in Patiala, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi, and Jadavpur University in Kolkata.
During 2010, researchers and students at both universities will have planning meetings to discuss the continued work. The ambition is to build on strong profile areas that have been developed at the respective universities. In Gothenburg, LIR is for example involved in a major interdisciplinary project on Myth and Narrative, whereas in Lund, research in Sikh and Punjabi studies has become strongly established, not the least through a Nordic collaboration project on Sikh Identity Formation. The important networking role of SASNET, based at Lund University, was also pointed out in the successful application.

Earlier research on Indian religions at the department

The interest in Indic religions is however nothing new at the Department of History of Religions at Lund University. Already in 1946 Sten Rodhe defended his doctoral thesis ”Deliver us From Evil. Studies on the Vedic Ideas of Salvation”, which was a comparative study between Hinduism and Christianity. Sten Rodhe worked for many years as a teacher of religion in Sweden, and wrote several text books dealing with Indian religions. He was deeply influenced by Bede Griffiths, a British Benedictine friar who created an ashram, Shantivanam, in South India Sten Rodhe published a book on Griffith in 2002, ”Bede Griffiths – en pionjär i nutida religionsdialog”, Proprius).

Carl Gustav Diehl (1906-1995) defended his doctoral dissertation at the department in 1956. The thesis was named ”Instrument and Purpose. Studies on Rites and Rituals in South India”, and was based on research carried out in Tamil Nadu, India, where he had been residing and working as a Swedish missionary since 1932. Between 1954 and 1959 he was working at the department in Lund, and after that he spent some years at Uppsala University, before returning to India in 1967 to become Bishop for the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church (T.E.L.C.) in Tranquebar (today called Tarangambadi). More information available in a paper by Sofie Johansson, Uppsala University, based on Carl Gustav Diehl’s and other Swedish missionaries archives. Go for the paper (as a pdf-file).

Ongoing Research connected to South Asia

• Within the Department of History of Religions, approximately one-third of the doctoral projects relate to Indic Religions, forming an active and lively seminar headed by Professor Olle Qvarnström, co-ordinator of the Indic Religions division. He has conducted extensive research on Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, especially philosophical and theological traditions, their doctrinal system and praxis, mutual influence and conflict. He has served as Professor in Sanskrit and Jainism at the University of Toronto, Canada, and recently at Universität Leipzig, Germany. He has also been research scholar and lecturer at several other universities in Europe and the United States, including Oxford, Harvard and Berkeley. His latest publication is ”The Yogasastra of Hemacandra. A Twelfth Century Handbook on Svetambara Jainism” (Harvard University Press 2002).
Olle Qvarnström has further arranged two major international conferences on Jainism and Early Buddhism, the last of which was held in Lund in 1998, and he has been avtively involved in establishing SASNET at Lund University.

Prof. Qvarnström is involved in several ongoing research projects:
• Studies in Indian Doxography: Early Buddhist and Jaina Critique of Samkhya Philosophy.
• The Øresund Indic Manuscript Project, in collaboration with Associate Professor Kenneth Zysk (photo to the right), Head of the Indology section at the Dept. of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
• The Initiative for European Cooperation on Jaina Studies, in collaboration with Peter Flügel, Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), University of London, UK; Erik Seldeslachts och Eva De Clercq, Indology section at the Dept. of Languages and Cultures of South and East Asia, Ghent University, Belgium; Kornelius Krumpelmann, Universität Münster, Germany; Julia Hegewald, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany; and Nalini Balbir, l’Université Paris-3, France. Every year the group organises International Jaina Studies Workshops.
• Jaina Paintings at Ellora, in collaboration with Niels Hammer. More information below.
• Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, in collaboration with Peter Skilling, International Centre for Buddhist Studies, Bangkok, Thailand; Sieglinde Dietz, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany; and Jens Braarvig, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo, Norway. More information about the Schøyen Collection.

• Dr. Martin Gansten, primarily engaged in research on Classical Hinduism, defended his doctoral thesis project on astrology and other Hindu divination techniques, named ”Patterns of Destiny: Hindu Nadi Astrology”, dealing with a South Indian form of Divination/Astrology, so-called nadi-reading, on Tuesday 30 September 2003. Read abstract.
Martin Gansten also translated and published Bhagavadgita, as mentioned above, in 2001.
In November 2004 Martin Gansten was given a three-years grant (2005-07) from the Swedish Research Council for a project on Mokshopaya: myth and philosophy in a Hindu didactic poem. The project is carried out in collaboration with Institut für Indologie und Südasienwissenschaften, Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany; and Il Dipartimento di Studi Orientali, La Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. More information on the project.
Martin Gansten frequently collaborates with a colleague at Åbo Akademi in Finland, Dr. Måns Broo who defended his doctoral dissertation ”As Good as God. The Guru in Gaudiya Vaisnavism” in 2003. In 2005 Gansten and Broo published a book with their translations from Sanskrit into Swedish of the 12 earliest Upanishads (Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Kaushitaki, Kena, Katha, Isha, Shvetashvatara, Mundaka, Prashna and Mandukya). The book, titled ”De tidiga upanisaderna”, was published by Nya Doxa (photo to the right). More information on the book.

• Dr. Kristina Myrvold (photo to the right) defended her doctoral dissertation titled ”Inside the Guru's Gate: The Ritual Uses of Texts among the Sikhs in Varanasi”, on Thursday 20 December 2007. The thesis deals with Sikh rituals in Varanasi, where she has conducted fieldwork for several years. Her study focuses on religious attitudes towards the Sikh scripture and the ritual use of texts. Faculty opponent will be Assistant Professor Michael Nijhawan, Dept. of Anthropology, South Asia Institute (SAI), University of Heidelberg, Germany. More information, with an abstract.
The day after the dissertation, Kristina was interviewed by the Lund University’s Student Union magazine Lundagård. The article was titled ”Att halka rätt”. Read the article (as a pdf-file, in Swedish only).
Before coming to Lund Univeersity, Kristina Myrvold studied at the Department of Religious Studies and Theology, Karlstad University, and she still keeps the relation by teaching courses in Indian religions at Karlstad University. During the academic year 2002/03 Myrvold was a visiting scholar at the Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies, University of California (UCSB), Santa Barbara, US. In 2005, she organised a workshop on Sikhism at Lund University, in collaboration with the Centre for Sikh and Punjab Studies, UCSB, and in 2006, Kristina Myrvold and her husband Harpreet Singh again spent their time at the Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies in Santa Barbara, this time on a Fulbright scholarship. In the Fall 2006, back in Lund Kristina taught a 5 credits course on Sikhism, the first course of its kind in the Scandinavian countries. Kristina Myrvold was also one of the two initiators for the academic journal Chakra – tidskrift för indiska religioner, published at the department. This magazine was launched in March 2004, and in collaboration with the department, Chakra organised a conference on "Ritual Practices in Indian Religions and Context" in December 2004 (more information about the conference).
More information on Kristina’s personal web page
In her current research, Dr. Myrvold focuses on religious practices and worship among the Sikhs in Punjab and in different diasporic settings, focusing on Sikh katha – oral and textual expositions of Guru Granth Sahib – in local and translocal contexts. She investigates contemporary manifestation of katha and which functions traditional and new forms of religious expositions have for understanding of the teaching and identity of the Sikh scripture, especially among the second generation of Swedish Sikhs. Her theoretical interests are primarily directed towards anthropology of religion, performance and ritual studies, emic historiography, and religious language and uses of texts.
In October 2008, Kristina Myrvold was given a three-years grant (2009-11) from the Swedish Research Council for this project, now titled ”Translating the Guru’s Words to Local and Translocal Contexts: Oral and Written Exegesis among Contemporary Sikhs”.
Abstract: The canonized Sikh scripture, Guru Granth, is by many Sikhs believed to manifest divine words and embody the teaching and revelatory experiences of their historical human gurus. The Sikhs have also taken the concept of a sacred scripture much further than any other religious tradition by treating the Guru Granth as a personified guru. Although an extensive migration from the “homeland” Punjab has increased the cultural and linguistic diversity in the Diaspora, the Sikhs continue to ritually use their scripture in the original script and language. The means to overcome the limitations posed by a closed canon is to create oral and written katha - religious “story-telling” or expositions on the Sikh scripture and history. The exegetical tradition is a significant aspect of the Sikh religious life which has been neglected in the international study of Sikhism. During the last decades the Sikhs have also taken active use of modern media to transmit new forms of expositions through translocal networks. Based on textual analyses and field work in the Punjab and in Sweden the project aims at investigating contemporary manifestation of Sikh katha and which functions traditional and new forms of expositions have for understanding of the teaching and identity of Guru Granth, especially among the second generation Swedish Sikhs. The study will illustrate how Sikhs are interconnected through exegetical practices and culturally translate interpretations of the Sikh teaching to a changing world. 

• PhD candidate Katarina Plank (photo to the right) specialises in Buddhist studies. Her upcoming thesis focuses on the international lay meditation movement of Vipassana teacher S N Goenka and in particular on lay meditation practices in Sweden. Plank also teaches at Lund university and at CEAS, Gothenburg university, on meditation, Theravada Buddhism, and Buddhism in the West. Personal web page

• PhD Candidate Sumana Ratnayaka is working on doctoral thesis project titled ”Mindfulness: Classical and Modern Interpretations”. Mr. Ratnayaka comes from Sri Lanka, where he has been an active Buddhist monk for 25 years. The research project consists of two major parts: 1. A historical and philological study of the concept of “bhavana” (“cultivation”, “development”) and its semantic development, with special reference to (anu-, pati-) sati (“mindfulness”), based on the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism and its commentaries and subcommentaries. 2. An anthropolical study of “mindfulness” as practised by monks and nuns as well as lay practitioners in Sri Lanka today. Interviews will be conducted in Colombo and Kandy at institutes such as Vidyodaya pirivena and Vidyalankara pirirvena, and at meditation centres, such as Kanduboda Vipassana Meditation Centre and Nillambe Meditation Centre.
Project abstract: During the 19th century, Western scholars and Buddhist practitioners reinterpreted the Buddhist teaching. This rerendering of Buddhism, which the German Indologist Heinz Bechert termed ”modernized Buddhism”, stems in particular from the political and religious developments in Sri Lanka during the late 19th century, including Christian mission, western interpretations of Buddhism and the emergence of an urban western educated middle class. Modernized Buddhism emphasized rational and philosophical aspects, and viewed meditation as the central practice. Such interpetations of Buddhism – Theravada as well as Zen and Tibetan – were gradually introduced to the West, and after the Second World War, Buddhism and its various forms of meditation came to be practised. Buddhism was thus being objectified, separated from its social and religious context, and individualized. Meditation suited the therapy culture of the West and its focus on the well-being of the individual.
One central aspect of Buddhist meditation, as found in the Theravada tradition as well as in Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, is what is termed “mindfulness”. This concept and its practical applications have made an enormous impact on the West, being adopted both by potential converts and people with a general interest in Buddhism, and by the academic/scientific community, integrating it within psychology and psychotherapy. Accordingly, “mindfulness” has been viewed as a therapeutic technique. This has led to an investigation by the Swedish medical authorities as to the spread of this and other methods, classified by Socialstyrelsen as “AKM” (Alternativ- eller Komplementärmedicin). In connection with this, the Department of Psychology plan to conduct clinical experiments on mindfulness, and the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CTR) propose to study “mindfulness” among Buddhist converts and sympathizers as well as in the context of developing AKM-practices in Swedish society.
“Mindfulness” has thus in the West (and to a certain degree even in Asia, due to western influence) been equated with “meditation” and viewed as a technique, a therapeutic method for personal development, compatible with modern science. More information.

• Dr. Sidsel Hansson defended her doctoral thesis ”Not Just Any Water: Hinduism, Ecology and the Ganges Water Controversy”, on 28 September 2001. More information on the thesis.
An article by Hansson, ”To clear sins and wash clothes. Gender relations on the Ganga shore in Varanasi” (in Swedish though), appeared in 2002 in the volume ”Stigma, Status och Strategier” (Studentlitteratur, edited by Catharina Raudvere).
She has, together with Eva Hellman, Dept of History of Religion, Uppsala University, been involved in a research project on ”Gender and Religious activism in South Asia: A study of Christian, Hindu, and Muslim women’s organisations”. This project was given planning grants from SASNET in 2001, and a continuation in 2002. Within the project Sidsel Hansson has initiated studies focusing on rural women’s activism in India. With a theoretical framework these ethnographic micro-studies raise questions about the impact of politicised religion and globalisation on marginalised women’s agency in environmental risk areas.

Since the Spring 2004 Sidsel Hansson is based at the Centre for East and South East Asian Studies (ACE), Lund University, where she holds a post-doc position. Currently, she is working on a project dealing with hinduisation and women’s groups within the environmental movement in Rajasthan. In January 2004 she was given a three-years grant from Sida/SAREC to carry out a major research project on this issue. The project was called: ”Gender, Education, Religion, and Environment. Women's activism and self-education in an environmental risk district in northwest India”. More information.
The project was carried out in collaboration with Pernille Gooch, Division of Human Ecology, Dept. of Ethnology, and the MA student Behnoush Payvar, Centre for East and South East Asian Studies (South Asia track).
Project Abstract: The project studies the nexus of social, cultural and religious factors influencing underprivileged women’s access to educational resources and civil society agency in an environmental risk region. It discusses the most important factors obstructing/facilitating the process. In order to gain an understanding of the dynamics it is essential to look into women’s efforts to organise themselves at the micro level. The analysis focuses on the women as actors, and on the strategies that they use. A main hypothesis in the project is that women’s empowerment depends on their capacity to strategically use their environmental knowledge which affords status in some contexts, and their religious traditions which affords legitimacy in other contexts. Data from the ethnographic study will be compared with data from secondary sources in order to discuss education and gender vulnerability in environmental risk areas and the consequent policy implications.

• Åse Piltz defended her doctoral dissertation called ”Seger åt Tibet! Den tibetanska diasporan och den religiösa nationen” (Victory to Tibet! The Tibetan Diaspora and the Religious Nation), on Saturday 22 October 2005. The thesis focuses on images of Tibet, among Westerners as well as among Tibetans. Based on approximately one year of fieldwork in the former British Hill station, it also deals with the politics of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) and some of its political and social implications for the exiled Tibetan youth living in Dharamsala, India. Faculty opponent was Dr. Axel Kristian Strøm, Dept. of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway. More information with abstract.

• PhD candidate Ulla Thoresen is working on a project on the Tulku institution in Vajrayana Buddhism. She defended her Licentiate thesis on ”The Tulku institution: Traditionalism and Modernity among Tibetans living in exile in India” on Friday 10 June 2005. Faculty Opponent was Dr. Axel Kristian Strøm, Dept. of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway. Read the thesis as a full text document (pdf-file).

• The researcher Niels Hammer, Orås, is involved in a research project together with Prof. Olle Qvarnström, on documenting the Jaina paintings at the Ellora caves in Maharashtra, India.
Niels Hammer, is an expert on Sanskrit Poetry, and in 2003 he wrote a book titled ”The Art of Sanskrit Poetry. An Introduction to Language and Poetics”, that was published in India by Munshiram Monoharlal in Delhi. It contained an introduction to the Sanskrit language and an investigation into the relationship between the nine basic affective states (bhava) and the form they take in the absence of self-interest (tatasthya) according to the theory of Indian aesthetics as developed in the Dhvanyaloka and the Abhinavabharati. More information about the book.

During an extensive documentation of 21 major temple and cave sites in India, Mr. Hammer took a series of photographs, some of them depicting the Jaina cave paintings in Ellora. These photos came to the attention of Prof. Olle Qvarnström. As these paintings are unique, seen from the point of view of the history of the Jaina religion, and as they display distinct artistic quality on a par with that of Ajanta it was decided to photograph them in extenso and subsequently to write a monograph delineating (1) historical background, (2) rules and quality of craftsmanship as based on the Citrasutra chapters of the Visnudharmottarapurana, and (3) artistic and emotional aspects as based on the Natyasastra, and (4) religious motivations and interpretations as based on such Digambara texts as Jinasena’s Harivamsa Purana and Adipurana.
Qvarnström and Hammer jointly visited the archaeological heritage place in western India during the Fall 2005, and have since written a manuscript and prepared the pictures for publication. A paper was presented at the 9th Jaina Studies Workshop, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London on Wednesday 21 March 2007. The paper presented in London was titled ”The Dancing Indra: Jain Cave Paintings from Ellora”. More information about the Ellora project.

• MA and MSc Lennart Warnemyr has done research on early Mahayana Buddhism, as viewed through Chapter 32 of the Samadhirajasutra. Warnemyr has translated the work into Swedish and English from the Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit original. He has then continued to analyse the text and put it into context. Lennart Warnemyr has a knowledge both of Sanskrit and Pali, and has participated in the Seminary of Indic Religions, running at the department. He has also published ”An Analytical Cross Referenced Sanskrit Grammar”, a book that is available through his personal web page, http://www.warnemyr.com/.

• PhD Jürgen Offermanns defended his doctoral thesis on ”Der lange Weg des Zen-Buddhismus nach Deutschland: vom 16. Jahrhundert bis Rudolf Otto”, on 10 May 2002, dealing with the European reception of Buddhism. Read abstract.
Dr. Offermans is now planning for a project on ”Buddhism – a Swedish Cultural Heritage”. On 10 October 2006 he was given SEK 1 746 000 as a three-years (2007-09) grant from the Swedish Research Council for this project. Against the background of political, cultural and religious conditions in Sweden, he aims at describing and analyzing the gradual establishing of Buddhism within Swedish cultural life from the 17th Century till the beginning of the 1930s. More information.

• PhD candidate Lisbeth Andersson is doing research on caste, gender and social issues in a South Indian Hindu movement – the Amma/Adiparashakti worship. In 2002 she published an article on this, ”When the paterfamilias turns into a Mother. On Gender relations in a South Indian temple worship” (in Swedish though), in the volume ”Stigma, Status och Strategier” (Studentlitteratur, edited by Catharina Raudvere). The project is however now dormant.

Conference on Ritual practices in December 2004

Two of the key speakers at the Lund conference, Peter Flugel, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Gananath Obeyesekere, Princeton University.

A Nordic conference on ”Ritual practices in Indian religions and contexts” was successfully held at Lund University 9–11 December 2004. The conference was arranged by the seminars of Indian Religions and Ritual Studies at the Department of History and Anthropology of Religion, Lund University, in cooperation with the academic journal Chakra – Tidskrift för indiska religioner. 40 scholars and PhD students engaged in research concerning Indian religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism) and rituals took part in the conference.  Keynote speakers were the anthropologists Gananath Obeyesekere, Princeton University and Elisabeth Schombucher, University of Heidelberg; and Peter Flügel, Religious Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Gurinder Singh Mann, Sikh and Punjab Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, was also supposed to be a key speaker but was unfortunately at the last moment prevented from coming. Presented papers will be considered for publication in Chakra. More information at the conference web page.

Educational courses on Indic religions:

• A 20 credits half-time course for beginners in Elementary Sanskrit was held during the academic years 2003-04 and 2004-05. The teacher was Martin Gansten.
Since 2001 the Indic Religions Division has also offered a number of specialised 5 credits courses on Bhagavadgita; Western Buddhism; Yoga and Meditation in Indian religions; Tantra and Tantrism; Jainism, Non-violence and Vegetarianism; and Astrology and Divination in Indian religions.
More information on the courses offered.
• During the Spring 2006 the Indic Religions Division arranged a 5 credits course on Western Buddhism. Contact person: Prof. Olle Qvarnström
• In the Fall 2006 a new 5 credits course on Sikhism was introduced. It was the first course on Sikhism at any Scandinavian university, and the teaching was carried out by Kristina Myrvold, researcher specialised on Sikh studies.
There was also be a 5 credits course on Jainism, Non-violence and Vegetarianism during the Fall 2006.

Project on Indian Religions in the Nordic countries

Professor Olle Qvarnström is part of an ongoing Nordic project called ”Nordisk orientalism – indiska religioner i Norden”. It aims at collaboration in the field of Indian religions studies inte Nordic countries. Besides Qvarnström the project group includes Torkel Brekke from the University of Oslo, Norway; Måns Broo, Åbo Akademi, Finland; and Erik Sand, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
As part of this effort a workshop was held in Copenhagen on Thursday 22 September 2005. The workshop was jointly organised by the Indic Religions division, Lund University and the Dept. of History of Religion, Institute for Intercultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. More information with full programme.

2008 Workshop on Sikhs in Europe

An Exploratory Workshop on ”The Sikhs in Europe. History, Religion and Representation” was held at Lund University, 13–14 June 2008. The conference was funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. The invited speakers included Prof. Shinder Thandi from Coventry University, UK, who talked about ”Migration and History of the Sikhs in Europe”; and Prof. David Omissi, University of Hull, UK, who talked about ”Indian Soldiers in Europe, 1914–1918”. The entire workshop was public.
On the second day, discussions were held regarding possibilities for future European collaborative research projects on Sikhs in Europe. More information.

At the end of the workshop, the participants decided to establish the network Sikhs-in-Europe for the purpose of developing closer academic cooperation between students and researchers with a common interest in the Sikhs and Sikhism in Europe.
The creation of the network Sikh-in-Europe reflects a growing academic interest in the European Sikh and Punjabi diasporas. An extensive migration from the Punjab – the north-western state of India and the “homeland” of the Sikhs – in the twentieth century resulted in Sikh settlements in different parts of the world. This development attracted the scholarly attention to the Sikh religion and Sikh diasporas, especially in English-speaking countries. New patterns of migration, settlements, representations and transnational networks of the Sikhs in more recent decades have made scholars aware of the importance to undertake research studies of the Sikhs in different European contexts and the need to create academic collaborations across disciplinary and national borders. As the first step in this direction, the network Sikhs-in-Europe is an initiative to create cooperation between scholars who come from a wide range of disciplines and are affiliated to different universities in Europe and beyond.
In July 2008, a new web site was established by the network, titled Sikhs-in-Europe It contains a lot of useful information about conferences etc. Go for the web site.