Oxford, UK
08/12/2025
A one-day workshop celebrating the work of Prof. David N. Gellner, FBA, who is an Advisor to the Centre for Nepal Studies (CNSUK) UK, was organised at All Souls College, Oxford University.
Altogether seven research papers engaging Prof. Gellner’s work were presented and discussed during the event. Presenters included: Prof. Joanna Pfaff-Czarnecka (Bielefeld University), Dr Uma Pradhan (UCL London), Sanyukta Shrestha (University of Oxford), Dr Ina Zharkevich (Kings College London), Prof. Charles Ramble (PSL University Paris), Dr Akanksha Awal (SOAS London), and Thomas Bell.
The Oxford workshop, is the last in the series of events organised by the Centre for Nepal Studies UK for this purpose. Earlier this year, a Symposium was organised at Hotel Shankar, Kathmandu, hosted by Social Science Baha, in which 13 papers were presented covering various themes related to the work of Prof. Gellner. Similarly, a four-paper-panel was organised at the Anthropological Conference organised by Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu on 21 July 2025.
These academic events celebrating Prof. Gellner’s work have been convened by a committee comprising of five researchers/academics: Dr Krishna Adhikari and Lokendra P. Dhakal of CNSUK, Dr Uma Pradhan of UCL, London, Dr Shrochis Karki, and Prof. Chiara Letizia of University of Quebec in Montreal, and coordinated by Dr Krishna Adhikari.
The organisation of these workshops, particularly the Oxford event was possible thanks to the kind support All Souls College, through Prof. Alpa Shah and Prof. Diwakar Acharya. The Kathmandu event was supported through the Nanda R. and Pamela L. Shrestha Fund for Honouring Nepal Scholars Nepal Scholars, through Social Science Baha.
Dr Krishna Adhikari, who coordinated the events from the Centre for Nepal Studies UK, said, “These papers both engage and attempt to advance Prof. Gellner’s scholarly work on Nepal and South Asia and will be a vital academic resources. Therefore, we have planned to publish an edited volume in 2026, and it will be a collaborative project involving the conveners, Centre for Nepal Studies UK and Social Science Baha”,
About David Gellner
David N. Gellner, Professor of Social Anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, a Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of British Academy (FBA), retired from his position in September 2024. His teaching and research career in the field of social and cultural anthropology spanned over 40 years. He has played a critical role in advancing social anthropology, particularly with reference to religion and society in Nepal and South Asia, with his wide-ranging scholarship and focus on Nepal, South Asia, or Buddhism.
Gellner’s research has always focused primarily on Nepal, although he has also carried out some fieldwork in Japan and in India (eastern UP). His doctoral work was on religion, ritual, and social aspects of Newar Buddhism, resulting in the monograph, Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and Its Hierarchy of Ritual (1992), as well as many articles. Subsequently, he and Declan Quigley brought out the edited volume, Contested Hierarchies: A Collaborative Ethnography of Caste among the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal (1995), a major statement on Newar social organization.
Over the years, Gellner’s research interests, and the topics he has published on, expanded to include: healers, mediums, and misfortune; Theravada Buddhism and religious reform; caste and Dalits; nationalism, ethnicity, and politics; activism, elections, and civil society; borderlands; Nepali diaspora populations and migration; schools and education; secularism and religious change; and inequality, class, and cultural consumption. To these can be added occasional publications on anthropological history, anthropological methods, and Max Weber.
What distinguishes Gellner’s approach is that he is equally interested both in cultural specificities and nuances (as befits a scholar who studied Sanskrit and knows Nepali and Nepalbhasa/Newari) and in structural constraints and forces. He is never tempted to reduce one or other side either to irrelevance or to being a simple product or reflex of the other side. Nor does he share the conventional anthropological prejudice against quantitative methods.
As indicated by the early collection, Contested Hierarchies, Gellner has continually sought out diverse research collaborations in order to broaden the range of his work. He has led numerous projects to bring foreign and Nepali scholars together to the advantage of both. He always encouraged his students to consider original scholarship produced by native authors in their own languages along with the works produced by scholars in foreign languages. He has published 25 books and supervised more than 50 PhDs over the course of his career. Four of those students contributed chapters to his edited volume Borderland Lives in Northern South Asia (2013). He has played a great role in promoting the exchange of academic knowledge and scholarship between UK academic institutions and individuals and institutions in South Asia, particularly Nepal. He is a founding member of the Britain-Nepal Academic Council (BNAC) and a founding advisor of the Centre for Nepal Studies UK (CNSUK).