Professor Gavin Flood

Senior Research Fellow in Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion

gavin.flood@theology.ox.ac.uk

About

Apart from being a Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall, Gavin is a Professor Emeritus of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion in the Theology and Religion Faculty and is currently the Piramal Dean of Academic Affairs for the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Gavin read Religious Studies and Social Anthropology at Lancaster University and taught at the universities of Wales (Lampeter) and Stirling before coming to Oxford in 2005. He was given a personal chair in Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion in 2009 and elected to the British Academy in 2014.

Research Interests

Gavin comments: My life’s work has been to understand religion in human life and its importance to the longue durée of civilizations and ways in which religion bestows meaning and significance to us. To this end I currently work in three related areas:

The study of tantric texts in medieval India. Philological and textual work is indispensable in any inquiry into the history of religions. Through close reading we can build more general models of person and society. To this end I am editing and translating the Netra-tantra with my colleague Dr Wernicke-Olesen and close reading has enabled me to write The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra (forthcoming).
Phenomenology. If phenomenology is letting be seen that which shows itself (to reference Heidegger) then the phenomenology of religions is a kind of showing. I explore this idea in Naming Invisible Light: A History and Phenomenology of Holiness, in process.
Comparative Religion. We can discern parallel processes across the histories of civilizations (such as China, India, the Middle East, and Europe). I have examined bigger patterns of religions and personal life in Religion and the Philosophy of Life (OUP 2019) and The Truth Within: A History of Inwardness in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism (OUP, 2013). I am optimistic that religions are not all bad news.

Selected Publications

Hindu Monotheism, Element Series (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Religion and the Philosophy of Life (Oxford University Press, 2019.

The Truth Within: A History of Inwardness in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2013).

The Importance of Religion: Meaning and Action in Our Strange World (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2011).

The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge University Press, 1996).