Long Lives and Untimely Deaths

Barbara Gerke, D.Phil. (2008) in Social Anthropology, University of Oxford, is the Principal Investigator of a three-year DFG funded research project at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on the anthropology of Tibetan Medicine, longevity, toxicity, and methods of purification.

'Gerke offers the first comprehensive account and analysis of Tibetans’ contemporary ideas and practices related to multiple ‘lifeforces’ and the ‘life-span’. In so doing she makes a noteworthy contribution to the study of Tibetans in Indian exile, outside of the well-documented Dharamsala-based communities. However, this work stands out for another reason: the author offers an innovative analytical approach, ‘practices of temporalisation,’ through which to consider the disparate, yet highly interconnected, ideas regarding long life that are held by medical, astrological, divinatory, and ritual experts and lay Tibetans. (...) This book will be a fascinating and inspiring reading for the specialized scholarly audiences in anthropology of the HImalayas, (Tibetan) Buddhism, and Asian medicines.'Theresia Hofer, University of Oslo, Himalaya, XXXII (2012)