SSEAS grad Michael Slouber wins DK Award for outstanding doctoral thesis on Sanskrit

Congratulations! And the official announcement:

Since the 2006 WSC (World Sanskrit Conference) in Edinburgh the IASS (International Association of Sanskrit Studies) inaugurated the DK Award for the outstanding doctoral thesis on Sanskrit and allied studies in collaboration with DK Agencies, Delhi. This is usually announced at  a WSC.

Four candidates competed for the Award for theses submitted in the period 2012-2014 and successful completion of their doctorates:

1. Jens W. Borgland: “A Study of the Adhikaraṇavastu: Legal Settlement Procedures of the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya”. University of Oslo, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, 2014.

2. Elaine Fisher: “A New Public Theology: Sanskrit and Society in Seventeenth-century South India”. Columbia University, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, 2013.

3. Michael Slouber: “Gāruḍa Medicine: A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia”. South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2012.

4. Vijaya Subramani:
“Aesthetic Non-dualism” in text and practice: Contemporary Arts in the Light of the Rasagaṅgādhara”. Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK, September 2011.

On account of its philological achievements, the Panel of Adjudicators decided to give the DK Award 2015 to:

Dr Michael Slouber for his dissertation on: “Gāruḍa Medicine: A History of Snakebite and Religious Healing in South Asia”, submitted to the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2012.

The adjudicators would like to explicitly place on record that the thesis by Dr Elaine Fisher was also outstanding and that she should be mentioned honourably for her research work in the field of Sanskrit and Sanskrit studies. This was done at the IASS General Assembly Meeting in Bangkok after announcing the winner.

The next deadline for the Award is the end of January 2018 and depending on when exactly the next WSC will take place in Vancouver, Canada, the Award will be announced there.

For details of the Award, including previous winners, please see the website of the IASS:

http://www.sanskritassociation.org/dk-award.php

The IASS heartily congratulates the winner for the outstanding thesis.
Jay Soni
Secretary General of the IASS