Bio

Meera Kachroo is an ethnographer, researcher, and lecturer of South Asian religions. Her doctoral research, funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, is based on extensive field work among ritual circles in South India, and focuses on the contemporary circulation of classical Hindu religious texts and traditions. Her research interests include exploring cultural change, social history, and especially the relations between secularism, religion, and modernity. Along with this research, she is developing institutional policies for religious accommodation and spiritual wellness at the University of Saskatchewan. As a lecturer at McGill University (Montreal), and the University of Saskatchewan, she has designed and led courses on Asian religions, Bollywood cinema, the culture of modern yoga, philosophies of non-violence, and environmental ethics.

Project

For my stay in the Faber Residency, I will be working on a project reflecting several years of engagement at the University of Saskatchewan supporting spiritual wellness and religious diversity in the University community. This project interrogates the notion of contemporary Canadian secularism considering the contemporary resurgence of visible markers of religious identity and the quantitative benefits of religious observances and community.