Austin Simoes-Gomes

Austin is an incoming PhD student in the Department for the Study of Religion researching the various spirit possession traditions in the Kathmandu Valley (Nepal). His academic interests also include method and theory, children and religion, and Buddhist birth and embryological narratives. He received his B.A. Honours from McGill University in 2018, where he studied Asian religions and South Asian studies. He also spent a year studying the Rangjung Yeshe Institute (RYI). He is currently finishing up his M.A. at the University of Toronto. At RYI, he did some preliminary ethnographic work on Swayambhu hill with the local Harati dyaḥ māju, a woman who becomes possessed by a deity and then performs ritual healings, and divinations. His current research seeks to situate the dyaḥ māju and their practices in the wider socio-ethnic world and discourses of Nepal. This project will seek to demonstrate how female mediumship disrupts and rearranges established gender and power dynamics, but also how mediums recreate and repurpose these hierarchical systems in a ritualized setting.