30.07.2026

Sonic Efficacy: Mantras, Music and Placemaking in Global Southern Asia

02 Sep 2026 - 04 Sep 2026

AS8, Level 4, Seminar Room 04-04
10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260
National University of Singapore @ KRC

For more details and registration, click here.

This workshop is funded by the ERC Synergy Project MANTRAMS – Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia (ID 101118934).

This workshop brings perspectives derived from immersive ethnography, sound studies, sensory anthropology, embodied research practice and historical methods to study efficacious sounds in relation to music, body, place and ritual in global southern Asia.

Sacred sound has been employed for centuries across human cultures to bring about transformations of the body, the self, society, and the cosmos. Among the most powerful expressions are mantras, which stand as paramount examples of efficacious sound.

Today, mantras are used by over a billion people globally for ritual, meditation and healing. Mantras are employed by diverse secular, religious and spiritual communities (Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists, New Age spiritualities, SBNR, etc.). Similar efficacious sacred sounds and syllables are used in Islamic, Christian, ancestor-worship, and animistic traditions.

In the lack of a single definition that works for its various manifestations over history and across geographical regions, “mantra” is a relational category shaped by the ways powerful syllables and sacred sounds are embedded within local sonic ideologies and musical genres.

The presentations, audio papers, and other multimodal and multisensory contributions that make up this workshop collectively explore the understudied intersections between sonic efficacy and sound practices, with particular attention to the role of mantras in processes of sonic soteriology and place-making in Southern Asia. Key themes include:

• Music and music instruments. How do mantric practices share a sonic ideology that is common to genres of sacred sound (e.g., zikr, kirtan, bhajan, nam japa, paritta) ? How is the efficacy of mantras and other sacred sounds affected or mediated by their performance, musical accompaniment, and/or amplification?
• Health and healing. How do mantras induce transformations of the body and the self? How are sonic and medical efficacies of mantras linked through ritual? Why are mantra practitioners often situated in the fuzzy borderland between religion and traditional medicine?
• Place-making. What is it that efficacious sounds do to the place where they are played, repeated, or amplified? How do mantras and sacred sounds contribute to inter-religious tensions and controversies surrounding competing soundscapes in diverse societies? How do local sonic ideologies and sacred cosmogonies intersect with spatial and communal belonging?

Building upon selected contributions from the participants, we will collectively work towards:

• An edited volume on Sonic Efficacy in Global South Asia.
• Sonic contributions to the OMnibus of MANTRAMS, MANTRAMS’ immersive multimedia archive.
• A series of audiovisual deliverables, e.g., in the format of audio papers, audiovisual essay or audio documentary to be published as part of a multimodal Special Issue.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Prof Carola Lorea	University of Tübingen
Dr Mukul Menon	University of Tübingen
Dr Devyani Bhosale	University of Tübingen
Ms Edda Schwarzkopf	University of Tübingen
Dr Yaoreipam Makang	University of Tübingen
Dr Tom Peterson	University Of Tübingen
Dr Ishita Mahajan	University Of Tübingen
Prof Kenneth Dean	National University of Singapore

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30.07.2026

Digital Humanities and Global Inequalities: Digital Return, Digital Orientalism, and the Potential of Collaborative Multimodal Online Research Outputs

8-9 October 2026 9am-5:30pm CEST
Theologicum (seminar room 8)
Liebermeisterstraße 12, 72076 Tübingen

Participation is free of charge and open to all. To participate (online & in person), please register until 30 September 2026 via email to souraja.chakraborty@uni-tuebingen.de!

Image: Manojk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Recent years have seen a marked increase in theoretical and empirical work from the intersections between digital humanities, ethnography, religious studies, and ethnomusicology. Virtual archives, websites, experimental modes of publication and social media presences are increasingly developed to digitally bridge what physically could only be reached by a select few. Yet, a broader implementation of this interdisciplinary scholarship and its collective potential for fostering epistemic justice and decolonization remains underexplored: How do digital outputs claiming to be collaborative and participatory actually consider global inequalities of digital access and literacy? How can they move from digital spaces towards actual societal change?

With this workshop, we will draw diverse communities of knowledge producers into conversation, locally in Tübingen and internationally, who are at the cutting edge of fostering digital epistemic justice but who are rarely able to share the same spaces of scholarly discussion. We will find synergies and strengthen the ties between collaborative digital archiving, arts-based research and technical infrastructures to examine concrete examples of digital outputs in different stages of completion and thus provide a dedicated, much needed space to exchange best-practices on how to navigate the complex terrains of meaningful engagement with (non-)academic communities of data providers, co-producers and reusers, especially in the Global South.

For more information, click here!

The workshop is organized and convened by the Digital Humanities Center, the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, and the ERC Synergy Grant project MANTRAMS under the Global Encounters Platform umbrella. It is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments.

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11.06.2026

Book Talk with Yogesh Maitreya

“Ambedkar - Sonic Imagination of Casteless Utopia” is a book that attempts to trace the sonic journey of Dr. Ambedkar as a protagonist of casteless utopia through the works of fifteen singers and musicians from the state of Maharashtra, India. This book focuses on Dr. Ambedkar as the theoretical premise of anticaste sonic imagination in which social democracy is melodically disseminated over the course of a century.

Yogesh Maitreya is a poet, writer, translator and publisher. He is a PhD scholar at TISS (Mumbai). His memoir “Water in a Broken Pot” depicting his journey of writing and publishing, was published in 2023 by Penguin Random House. Currently, he travels across people’s utopia between Europe and India. He is a recipient of the International Publishing Fellowship (UK, 2022) and Democracy Machine Fellowship (2023, USA).

Date and Time
Thursday 11 June 2026, 6pm - 8pm CEST

Location
Brechtbau (R327), Wilhelmstraße 50, 72074 Tübingen

Login Details in Zoom
950 7442 8836 (Meeting ID)
440386 (Passcode)

www.yogeshmaitreya.com

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24.03.2026

Visual Mantras Workshop: Inscription, Iconography, and the Visualization of Sacred Sound (Vienna, 20-22 May 2026)

Dates and times (CEST):

• Wednesday 20 May 2026, 17:30-19:00 – Keynote
• Thursday 21 May 2026, 09:30-16:30 – Workshop Day 1
• Friday 22 May 2026, 09:30-16:00 – Workshop Day 2

How do mantras become visible? This workshop, organized by MANTRAMS (Task Force 3: Materiality of Mantras), examines the inscription, iconography, and diagramming of sacred sound across South Asian and transregional contexts. Topics include diagrammatic forms (yantras, maṇḍalas, protective designs), iconographic correspondences between syllables, deities, colors, and directions, subtle-body visualizations, and the politics of visibility, secrecy, and authority.

The program opens with a public keynote by Kajri Jain (University of Toronto), “Vision in the sensorium of mantras”, followed by two workshop days featuring six panels with international scholars.

Attend online (free, registration required): Please register here to receive a unique Zoom link that covers the keynote and all workshop sessions.

For more information, click here!

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17.03.2026

Postdoctoral Researcher, MANTRAMS Project x2

Asian and Middle Eastern Studies,1 Pusey Lane, Oxford

Full time, Fixed-term - 3 years
The Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Oxford seeks to fill TWO positions for postdoctoral researcher on mantras in Asia. Reporting to the Principal Investigator (PI) Dr. Finnian M. Moore Gerety, each post holder will be a member of the interdisciplinary research project Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia (MANTRAMS), funded by a Synergy Grant from the European Research Council. They will be responsible for carrying out original research on mantras in Asia and connected regions; for authoring articles, publications, and/or multimedia research outputs on relevant topics under the supervision of the PI; and for co-organizing MANTRAMS workshops and co-editing project publications.

The successful candidates will hold or be close to obtaining a doctoral qualification in a relevant academic area, having expertise in Sanskrit (and/or other Asian languages as relevant), Indology, and the history of Asian religions. They will be experienced in independent scholarly writing to a high standard, and be able to demonstrate the ability to undertake innovative research. They will also have excellent communication skills in writing and presentation, be self-motivated in managing their own research and administrative activities (as well as those of the project as directed by the PI), and be able to contribute ideas for new projects and research income generation.

This position is based in central Oxford. Each position is a full-time, fixed-term position for three years, available from June 2026.

The closing date for applications is 12 noon on April 10, 2026.

Interviews are expected to take place the week commencing 27 April 2026.

Contact Person: HR Recruitment
Vacancy ID: 185245
Closing Date & Time: 10 April 2026, 12:00
Pay Scale: RESEARCH GRADE 7
Salary (£): £39,424 - £47,779 per annum
Contact Email: recruitment@ames.ox.ac.uk

For more information and a detailed job description, click here!

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19.11.2025

Call for Papers - Sonic Efficacy: Mantras, Music and Placemaking in Global Southern Asia (National University Singapore, 03-04 Sept 2026)

DEADLINE: 1 MARCH 2026

This workshop is funded by the ERC Synergy Project MANTRAMS – Mantras in Religion, Media and Society in Global Southern Asia (ID 101118934).

This workshop aims to explore the understudied intersections between sonic efficacy and sound practices, with particular attention to the role of mantras in processes of sonic soteriology and place-making in Southern Asia. Key themes include:

• Music and music instruments. How do mantric practices share a sonic ideology that is common to genres of sacred sound (e.g., zikr, kirtan, bhajan, nam japa, paritta) ?
• Health and healing. What is the therapeutic and medical efficacy of mantras? Why are mantra practitioners often situated in the fuzzy borderland between religion and traditional medicine?
• Place-making. What is that efficacious sounds do to the place where they are played, repeated, or amplified? How do mantras contribute to inter-religious tensions and controversies surrounding competing soundscapes in diverse societies?

We welcome audio papers and other multimodal and multisensory formats of academic knowledge production that unsettle the hegemony of the written word.

For more information and to submit your contribution, click here!

To spread this CfP, feel free to use this Hyperlink: mantrams.eu/news/#ari_workshop.

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09.07.2025

Four Postdoc Positions (m/f/d, E13 TV-L, 100%) at the University of Tübingen

Faculty of Humanities, Institute for the Study of Religions

The University of Tübingen invites applications for four Postdoctoral Researcher positions (m/w/d, E13 TV-L, 100%) within the ERC-funded Synergy Project MANTRAMS, Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia, specifically focusing on the multifaceted roles of mantras across cultures.

Position: Postdoctoral Researcher
Faculty: Faculty of Humanities
Deadline for Application: September 1, 2025
Job Vacancy Starting: December 1, 2025
Contract Duration: 24 months
Employment Type: 100% (TV-L E-13)

For more information, click here!