Ongoing Research

Memories of encounters with Swedish missionaries in Zimbabwe (Kajsa Ahlstrand)

This project, which is carried out in cooperation with the research unit at the Church of Sweden and researchers in South Africa, examines memories of the Swedish mission in Zimbabwe. In Sweden, archival research is carried out at the archives of the Church of Sweden and interviews with former missionaries. In Zimbabwe, interviews and an inventory of the material remains of the Swedish mission are carried out. The research question is about how painful and good memories of mission and personal encounters between Swedish missionaries and Zimbabwean Christians are expressed in different contexts.

Mission and dialogue between Jews and Christians in Vienna and Jerusalem (Håkan Bengtsson)

The goal of the project is a book about the establishment of the Swedish Theological Institute (STI) in Jerusalem in 1951 and the activities of the Swedish Israel Mission in Vienna. The central question relates to how the missionaries' meetings with Jews and how "conversations of religion" contributed to creating a research and teaching climate without missions. The missionary and deaconess Greta Andrén is a central figure in this development. Articles and biographical data have been published.

Dressed for eternity – Mummy bandages with texts from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead in the Uppsala University Museum's collections (Nils Billing)

This is an edition project that intends to publish texts from a larger collection of mummy bandages from the Ptolemaic period (ca. 400-100 BC), stored at Uppsala University Museum. The collection, which consists of about 250 separate volumes of various lengths, was purchased at the end of the 19th century by Karl Piehl, later professor of Egyptology in Uppsala, but has since remained largely unpublished. The present project should ultimately result in a complete publication with photographs, transcription, transliteration, and text-critical apparatus. The project was financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond as RJ Sabbatical 2022/23.

Fragments of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya Uttaragrantha (Jens W Borgland)

The project forms part of the larger project The Ancient Buddhist Birch Bark Manuscripts Project (https://www.philology.no/birchbark) under the auspices of the Norwegian Philological Institute and The Core Research Group of the Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection (BMSC), with support from The Robert H. N. Ho Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies. The objective is to sort, identify, transcribe, edit and analyze fragments of a Sanskrit manuscript containing parts of the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya, the canonical monastic discipline of the Mūlasarvāstivāda school of Buddhism.

Gunaprabha as an epitomizer and commentator on the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya (Jens W Borgland)

The project is a study of 22 folios of a unique Sanskrit palm leaf manuscript containing Guṇaprabha’s auto-commentary on the the Vinayasūtra, a sūtra style compendium summarizing the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya. By editing and analyzing the Sanskrit text of Guṇaprabha’s auto-commentary on the sūtras summarizing the naiḥsargika (‘forfeiture’) rules, Guṇaprabha’s interpretation and use of canonical sources is examined, thereby giving new insights into the development of the Indian Buddhist monastic legal tradition, as well as the Mūlasarvāstivāda vinaya. The project is financed by the Swedish Research Council.

From secular institution to religious organization: Shrine Shinto in post-war Japan (Ernils Larsson)

The project studies how Shinto actors have related to and adapted to the secular legislation in post-war Japan. The project mainly focuses on the organization Jinja Honchō ("National Association of Shinto Shrines") and consists of both historical and anthropological work. The project is located at the Center for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (Uppsala University), with a longer stay at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo. The project is conducted as an international postdoc, funded by the Swedish Research Council.