
Dr Theresia Hofer
Mag(Vienna), MSc(Brun.), PhD(Lond.)
Expertise
I am a social anthropologist with international research, teaching and curatorial experience. My regional research focus is the Tibetan and Himalayan region, South Asia and Japan.
Current positions
Associate Professor in Social Anthropology
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Contact
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Biography
I am a social anthropologist and have been at the Department of Anthropology & Archaeology since 2016. Prior to that I worked at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), University of Oxford, at the Institute of Health and Society, University of Oslo, and at University College London.
After my post-graduate research on rural primary health care, Tibetan medicine and memories of Communist reforms in Central Tibet, as well as language studies at Tibet University in Lhasa, I curated Bodies in Balance – The Art of Tibetan Medicine at the Rubin Museum, New York. My subsequent Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the University of Oslo investigated gender and healthcare in Tibet. Medicine and Memory: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform is my most recent book (UWP, 2018).
In my current Wellcome Trust-funded Research Fellowship Tibetan Sign Language and Deaf Identities in the Making I study how the newly-emerging Tibetan Sign Language (TSL) in Lhasa is transforming and empowering deaf people in a highly complex and contested cultural and linguistic space. It also looks closely at deaf education of ethnic Tibetans.
Apart from academic publications, outputs also include contributions to the international linguistic data bases Ethnologue and SIGN HUB Atlas as well as ongoing public engagement through a variety of media and inclusive curatorial practices in art and anthropology museums.
To date my regional focus has been on the Tibetan areas of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the wider Himalayan and South Asian region – including Bhutan and Nepal, and most recently on Japan.
Research interests
My research and publications engage with social and medical processes, and with (sign) language use, in Tibetan areas of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the wider Himalayan and South Asian region, as well increasingly, in East Asia, where I am currently developing new research and collaborations in Japan. My theoretical and methodological expertise lies in social, medical and linguistic anthropology, and I study how local and global aspects of disability intersect in the day-to-day with ideas about and the lived experiences of disability. My approach to the study of disability is not one that highlights biological tragedy, but instead diverse experiences of being human, mediated and shaped socially, linguistically and politically.
My research interests include the anthropology of disability and difference; critical global health; Asian medicines; gender; nationalism, ethnicity and identity; deaf anthropology, sign linguistics and language-focused methods; oral history; museum anthropology and collaborative, applied and visual research methodologies
Publications
Selected publications
15/03/2018Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform
Medicine and Memory in Tibet: Amchi Physicians in an Age of Reform
‘Civilising’ Deaf people in Tibet and Inner Mongolia: governing linguistic, ethnic and bodily difference in China
Disability and Society
Is Lhasa Tibetan Sign Language emerging, endangered, or both?
International Journal for the Sociology of Language
Women and Gender in Tibetan Medicine - Edited Volume
Asian Medicine
Recent publications
09/05/202421st Century World Hearing Day, Sign Language, and Cochlear Implant Infrastructures: Quo Vadis?
Desi Sanggye Gyatso’s Medical Paintings - Medicine, Science and the Everyday in Tibetan Art
Himalayan Art in 108 Objects
Tibetan Writing from the Socio-linguistic Margins of Tibet
Himalaya - The Journal of the Association of Himalayan Studies
Writing with Care
Himalaya - The Journal of the Association of Himalayan Studies
Writing with Care - Ethnographies from the Margins of Tibet and the Himalayas
Himalaya - The Journal of the Association of Himalayan Studies
Teaching
I teach broadly across social anthropology, with a focus on medical and linguistic anthropology, disablity studies, anthropology of eductaion, and Tibetan and Himalayan Studies.
Past and current courses taught include:
> Introduction to Medical Anthropology
> Anthropology of Disability and Difference
> Anthropology of the Body
> Language and Anthropology
> Ethnographic and Language-focused methods
> Beginners Tibetan Sign Language
> History of Asian Medicines
Regional specialisation
> Tibet
> Himalayan Regions
> South Asia, including Nepal and Bhutan
> People’s Republic of China
> Japan