Vitus Angermeier

Vitus Angermeier

Contact: 

E-Mail: vitus.angermeier@univie.ac.at
Web: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/vitus.angermeier/
ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5424-7824
CV: https://univie.academia.edu/VitusAngermeier/CurriculumVitae

Dr. Vitus Angermeier did both his MA and his PhD thesis in Vienna at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. He is particularly interested in Ayurveda, the Indian epics and the Arthaśāstra and engages with these subject fields in research and teaching. Within these fields he focuses on themes like nature reception, conceptions of geography and space, ethical concepts as well as social, cultural and scientific developments.

Research focus

During his PhD studies, Vitus Angermeier investigated the significances of water in the textual sources of early Āyurveda, resulting in his first monograph Regenzeiten, Feuchtgebiete, Körpersäfte. Das Wasser in der klassischen indischen Medizin, published with open access in 2020 by the Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. The underlying research touches not only upon medical usage of water but also examines the role of climate and seasons, the understanding of bodily fluids and the discussion of various waterscapes and their significance for medicine in five different medical compendia and the related commentarial literature. During that time he also contributed to the research projects "Philosophy and Medicine in Early Classical India", working towards a critical edition of the Carakasaṃhitā, one of the foundational texts of Āyurveda.

Since 2022, Angermeier is the principal investigator at the FWF funded research project "Epidemics and Crises Management in Per-Modern South Asia", and is thus taking up the topic of his master’s thesis, which dealt with a chapter from the Carakasaṃhitā, in which various aspects of epidemics and similar mass afflictions are discussed. To provide material for a comprehensive historical perspective, this project is not limited to Āyurveda but synthesizes findings from scientific, religious, art historical, and archaeological sources into a cultural and intellectual history of epidemics in pre-modern South Asia.

For more information, please visit the project website: https://epidemics.univie.ac.at/

Other activities

Vitus Angermeier is one of founders of the Initiative for Fair Open Access Publishing in South Asian Studies, which advocates that research results should not only be publicly accessible for free, but that their dissemination must also be organized fairly for all stakeholders: https://foasas.org/.