Ph.D. Update!

I am incredibly honoured and moved to share that I am being awarded the Edinburgh Doctoral College scholarship of the School of Divinity and will be commencing my Ph.D. at Edinburgh University in September with full funding for my research, and with a thesis entitled (as of now!) “The Goddess’s Descent to Earth: In Dialogue with the Reimaginations of the Mahābhārata’s Draupadī”. I am extremely grateful to Professors Mark Harris, Alison Jack and to the board of the School of Divinity for believing in my work. There were times when I was close to not believing in it myself, but the love for the work has pulled me to keep moving forward even in the greatest moments of doubt. More exactly, the love has grown to be greater – and, to be honest, more interesting – than my doubt or uncertainties about myself, which are less exciting to follow than the mysteries that are to be uncovered.

Once, a teacher of mine shared that, if you quiet the mind and listen to your depths, you will be able to feel a thread, a glimmer – pulling you to where and how life wants to move through you. Where that is, as well as getting there, could seem unattainable by way of reason or logic, but the thread will pull you through in ways unimaginable to your perception, with its current limitations and insecurities. This has been my experience, as well.

Follow the thread. Let the love for your work guide you and pave your path. 💜

The Western Revival of Goddess Worship – Academic Paper

very excited to share the first academic paper of mine that is published in complete form in a peer-reviewed journal! it is entitled ‘The Western Revival of Goddess Worship’ and it has been published in Feminist Theology, volume 31(2).

‘[Western] Women are resisting secularism and are connecting with the transcendental on their own terms, while seeking self-understanding and self-realisation in a gynocentric cosmology. From deifying female sexuality to revering the cosmos as the womb of an all-pervading Mother Goddess, the Goddess Movement encapsulates women’s defiant quest for wholeness.’

i wrote this article two years ago (which is the approximate duration of academic publishing, haha!) during my first MA at Lancaster University, under the supervision of the fantastic Dr. Brian Black, whom i am most grateful to. this paper encapsulates my views at that time, and although my perspectives have become more refined since – both as a scholar and as a practitioner – i remain pleased with this work and i am hopeful that it contributes to the illumination of the phenomenon of religious revival in scholarship. 🙏

you can read it here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/09667350221135089