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

She will be working on two writing projects while in residence at Faber. The first is an essay comparing two visions of sacred utopia: the gem-island manidvipa found in Hindu mythologies, and John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, as articulated in the New Testament Book of Revelation. The second project is an analysis of contemporary policy in Canadian institutions of higher education, where she will interrogate the assumptions of contemporary secularism to make space for religious identity, authority, and practices.