About the Author

Geoffrey Samuel is a Professorial Fellow in the School of Religious and Theological Studies at Cardiff University. After training in physics at Oxford, he undertook a PhD in social anthropology at Cambridge, carrying out field research on religion and society with Tibetans in Nepal and India in 1971-72; most of his subsequent research has also focussed on Tibetan religion and other aspects of Tibetan society, though he has also worked in South Asia and in Western societies. His specialist fields include the anthropology of Buddhist societies, and of religion in South and Southeast Asia more generally; medical anthropology and the anthropological study of healing, including "shamanic" practices; anthropological theory, especially concerning mind-body processes and formal and informal knowledge in human society. At Cardiff, he is developing a series of research projects on mind-body processes in relation to healing, looking both at Tibetan medicine and yoga and at other Asian traditions, and also at the contemporary British usage of such techniques within the field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

His publications include three authored books, Mind, Body and Culture (1990), Civilized Shamans (1993) and Tantric Revisionings (2005). A fourth book, The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, is to appear with Cambridge University Press in 2007. Edited books include Tantra and Popular Religion in Tibet (1994, with Hamish Gregor and Elisabeth Stutchbury), Nature Religion Today (1998, with Joanne Pearson and Richard H. Roberts), Healing Powers and Modernity (2001, with Linda H. Connor) and The Daughters of Hariti: Childbirth and Female Healers in South and Southeast Asia (2002, with Santi Rozario). He has also produced a large number of articles, book chapters and other works.