Professor Will Sweetman

BA Hons (Lancaster) MPhil PhD (Cambridge)

Professor of Asian Religions
Richardson 5S3, 5th Floor, Richardson South Tower
Tel +64 3 479 8793
Email will.sweetman@otago.ac.nz
academia.edu (to access many of Will's publications)

Will Sweetman studied Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster and received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge.

He has taught at universities in London and Newcastle, and held research fellowships at Cambridge, Halle and Hamburg.

Will is a member of the Heterodox Academy and an ordained Dudeist priest.

Teaching

Will's teaching is focussed on the religions of India.

For many years, he has taught a paper on the culture of the body in Asian religions (RELS 209 / RELS 309 The Body in Asian Religions) and, in 2025, will introduce an entirely new paper on Yoga (RELS 218 / RELS 318 Yoga: Ancient and Modern).

Research

Will's research interests centre on interactions between the religions of Asia and the West in the modern period.

His doctoral research examined accounts of Hinduism in English, Dutch, German and French writers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The results of this research were published as Mapping Hinduism.

He continues to work in this area and is currently engaged in a study of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's works on Hinduism, in particular the Genealogie der malabarischen Götter (1713).

He has recently published an edition of Ziegenbalg's catalogue of his library of over one hundred Tamil Hindu manuscripts, including some that are not otherwise recorded.

Postgraduate supervision

Will welcomes inquiries from prospective PhD candidates working on topics in the areas of Asian religions, historical and theoretical questions in the study of religion, inter-religious encounters in colonial contexts, and Christian mission in Africa and Asia.

Current postgraduate students

Gregory Smith, (MA) 'Ramanuja's theology as "Panentheism"'

Cherie Coley, (MA) 'Rasa: The Theories and Psychology of Aesthetics, Emotion, and Liberation'

Phra Akbordin Rattana (PhD, co-supervisor) 'A Translation and Comparative Analysis of Pussadeva’s Paṭhamasambodhi'

Recent completions

Woramat Malasart, (PhD 2024) 'The Dhammakaya Lemmata from Core Text to Commentary: Buddhist Practices, Manuscript Transmission and Textual Formation in Traditional Buddhism in Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia'

Alistair Savai’i Knewstubb (MA 2022) 'Buddhist contemplative techniques will not cause a scientific revolution'

Books

(ed. with Aditya Malik) Hinduism in India: Modern and Contemporary Movements. New Delhi: Sage, 2016
[Preview] [Review]

Hinduism. 4 vols. Critical Concepts in Religious Studies. London: Routledge, 2014
[Details]

Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg's Tamil Library. Paris/Pondicherry: EFEO/IFP, 2012
[Read online] [Review] [Review (PDF)]

(translator) Ute Hüsken, Visnu's Children. Prenatal life-cycle rituals in South India. (Ethno-Indology. Heidelberg Studies in South Asian Rituals 9). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009
[Preview]

Mapping Hinduism: 'Hinduism' and the study of Indian religions. 1600-1776. Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2003
[Download]

A Discovery of the Banian Religion and the Religion of the Persees: a critical edition of two early English works on Indian Religions. Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1999
[Preview]