Ferdinando Sardella Professor
Contact
Name and title: Ferdinando SardellaProfessor
Workplace: Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Room E 794Universitetsvägen 10 E, plan 6
Postal address Institutionen för etnologi religionshistoria och genusvetenskap (ERG)106 91 Stockholm
About me
I am a Professor in the History of Religions at Stockholm University and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. My research examines how modern Hinduism—especially the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition—has been reshaped by colonial, postcolonial, and transnational dynamics, using archival, textual, and ethnographic methods. I work closely with colleagues in Kolkata and Bengal, and my publications include Modern Hindu Personalism (OUP) and The Handbook of Hinduism in Europe (Brill). I also teach across Asian traditions, linking historical contexts and key concepts to contemporary practice.
My work examines how modern Hinduism—especially Gaudiya Vaishnavism—has been reshaped under colonial, postcolonial, and transnational conditions. Using archival, textual, and ethnographic methods, I study how movements negotiate authority, textual transmission, gender, and identity in South Asia and the diaspora.
A major strand analyses the institutionalization of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in early-twentieth-century Bengal, focusing on Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati’s engagements with modernity. Extensive fieldwork and archival research in Kolkata underpin my monograph Modern Hindu Personalism (OUP, 2013). Related articles address succession disputes in Hindu institutions, female gurus in early Western Vaishnavism, and the negotiation of spiritual authority in diasporic settings.
I also contribute to debates on transnational religion, religious publishing, and the adaptation of devotional practices, including co-editing The Handbook of Hinduism in Europe (Brill, 2020) and contributing to The Future of Religious Studies in India (Routledge, 2020). A growing line of inquiry explores religion–ecology–ethics, tracing Vaishnava engagements with environmental discourse and climate activism, from the Bhagavata Purana to ISKCON.
My research is collaborative and comparative, with partners in India, Sweden, the UK, and the U.S., and includes conferences organized at Oxford, Harvard, and Stockholm. Across these projects I ask how traditions are reshaped by historical rupture, migration, and ongoing reinterpretations of sacred texts.