BAHAR is a network of researchers on the body, health and religion. BAHAR stands for the Body, Health and Religion. The word bahar also refers to the spring season, youth and vitality in Urdu, Farsi, Turkish, and other Asian languages. Our members are scholars of anthropology, religion, theatre, psychology, and other academic disciplines, as well as people working with the body in dance, movement and therapy, and creative artists in words, music, the visual arts and other dimensions. The BAHAR network has more than sixty members in many different countries including the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Malta, Canada and Australia. The network is directed by Geoffrey Samuel.
BAHAR was originally formed at Cardiff University in Wales, UK in March 2008, and is based in the Contemporary Studies Unit of Cardiff University's School of History, Archaeology and Religion. A list of the BAHAR members located at Cardiff University can be found here.
The BAHAR Research Group is involved in cross-cultural studies concerning the Body, Health and Religion and the interrelationships between them. Our orientation is essentially interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary. For BAHAR, the body refers to our psycho-physical being in the world as an embodied experience. Health refers to not just the absence of disease or recovery from physical trauma but the achievement of optimal human functioning at all levels. This involves also the relationship between individuals and the communities of which they form part, and between both and their wider environment. We see these relationships as needing to be understood in social and cultural terms as much as in those of biology or human ecology. Cross-culturally, the relationships between body and health, and between individual, community and environment have most often been expressed in a religious idiom, and the third major research component of BAHAR concerns the spiritual dimension of human life.
A list of some current and recent BAHAR projects can be found on the Projects page. These include work on Tibetan longevity practices, on Tibetan medicine, on Islam and young Bangladeshis in Bangladesh and the UK, and on the Taff Valley in South Wales.
For the website of our associated group, ASPARRG (Autism Spectrum People and Religion Research Group) click here.
Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West: Between Mind and Body, a collection of articles edited by Geoffrey Samuel and Jay Johnston, and including contributions by several other BAHAR members and friends, including Angela Sumegi, Barbara Gerke, Alejandro Chaoul, Crystal Addey, John Bramble, Susan Greenwood and Ruth Barcan, is to be published by Routledge in March 2013. Further details here.
The regular BAHAR seminar programme in Cardiff will not be taking place in Autumn Semester 2012 and Spring Semester 2013 owing to Geoffrey Samuel's absence in Canada as TLKY Visiting professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. The Cardiff programme will be resumed in October 2013.
Occasional BAHAR events may take place during the year, and will be advertised through the website and mailing list..
If you are interested in joining BAHAR or simply in coming to any of our activities and events, please e-mail Geoffrey or contact the BAHAR Office. Students interested in taking postgraduate degrees (PhD or Masters) with the BAHAR group at Cardiff University should also contact Geoffrey in the first place.
Page revised 7 January 2013