Barbara Gerke

Barbara Gerke

Contact: 

E-Mail: barbara.gerke@univie.ac.at
Web: https://univie.academia.edu/BarbaraGerke

Barbara Gerke received a M.Sc. in Medical Anthropology (2003) and a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology (2008) from the University of Oxford. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the FWF-funded projects Pandemic Narratives of Tibet and the Himalayas (P36136) (with post docs Dr. William McGrath and Dr. Jan van der Valk) and the project Potent Substances in Sowa Rigpa and Buddhist Rituals (P30804) (with post doc Dr. Jan van der Valk). She came to the University of Vienna in 2015 with a Lise-Meitner senior fellowship on Tibetan precious pill formulas. Her DFG-funded post doc project on Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medical) pharmacological detoxification methods (2011-2015) was based at Humboldt University of Berlin, where she also taught. She also taught at universities in the USA (University of California Santa Barbara and Dartmouth College, NH).

She works across the disciplines of medical anthropology and Tibetan studies. Her research interests are the anthropology of Sowa Rigpa, specifically Sowa Rigpa-related responses to the pandemic, the medico-religious interfaces in Sowa Rigpa pharmacology, and the use of potent and poisonous substances. Her ethnographic fieldwork is based in Buddhist communities across the Himalayas.

Her open-access monograph Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practice (Heidelberg University Publishing, 2021) examines the use of refined mercury in Tibetan medicines. Her first monograph Long Lives and Untimely Deaths (Brill, 2012) analyzes long-life rituals, as well as vitality and life-span concepts among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills. Together with Jan van der Valk and Sienna Craig (2020) she co-edited a Hot Spots issue on Asian medical responses to COVID-19. With Jan van der Valk she co-edited the special issue section of HIMALAYA (vol. 39.1, 2019) on potent substances. She also edited a special issue of Asian Medicine (vol. 8.1, 2013) on mercury in Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine. For her numerous articles and book chapters visit: https://univie.academia.edu/BarbaraGerke

Online Resources

FWF Project Pandemic Narratives of Tibet and the Himalayas 

FWF Project Potent Substances in Sowa Rigpa and Buddhist Rituals 

Taming the Poisonous open access monograph