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James Mallinson is lecturer in Sanskrit and Classical Indian Studies at SOAS, University of London. Dr Mallinson has a BA in Sanskrit and Old Iranian from the University of Oxford (1991), an MA in South Asian Area Studies (with ethnography as its primary subject) from SOAS (1993) and a DPhil. from the University of Oxford (2001). His doctoral thesis was a critical edition of the Khecarīvidyā, an early text on haṭha yoga, and was supervised by Professor Alexis Sanderson. A revised version of the thesis was published by Routledge in 2007.

After completing his doctoral studies Dr Mallinson worked as a principal translator for the Clay Sanskrit Library, for which he produced five volumes of translations of Sanskrit poetry. He has also published translations of two haṭha yoga texts, the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā (2004) and Śivasaṃhitā (2007) for YogaVidya.com. In addition to these books Dr Mallinson has published numerous articles, book chapters and encyclopedia articles. Roots of Yoga, a reader of translations of texts on yoga introduced and edited by Dr Mallinson and Dr Mark Singleton will be published in the Penguin Classics series in January 2017.

Dr Mallinson’s primary research method is philology, in particular the study of manuscripts of Sanskrit texts on yoga, which he complements with ethnographic data drawn from extensive fieldwork with Indian ascetics and the study of art historical sources. In recognition of his long association with the Rāmānandī Indian ascetic saṃpradāya, in 2013 the order honoured him with the title of mahant, an event recorded in the Smithsonian Channel’s television documentary West Meets East. His work on art historical depictions of yogis led to his being invited to be a consultant and catalogue author for the 2013 exhibition‘Yoga: The Art of Transformation at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.

Mark Singleton’s research interests lie in the intersection of tradition and modernity in yoga. He was research assistant to Dr. Elizabeth De Michelis at Cambridge University’s Dharam Hinduja Institute of Indic Research in 2002-3, and went on to complete a Ph.D at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity on the modern history of yoga. During this time he also began the formal study of Sanskrit with Drs. Eivind Kahrs and John Smith. He taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at St. John’s College (Santa Fe, New Mexico) between 2006 and 2013.

He has been a senior long-term research scholar at the American Institute of Indian Studies, based in Jodhpur (Rajasthan, India), and was a consultant and catalogue author for the 2013 exhibition ‘Yoga: The Art of Transformation’ at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.. He served as co-chair of the Yoga Consultation at the American Academy of Religions from 2012 to 2015. He is co-manager of the Modern Yoga Research website.

His books include Yoga in the Modern World (Routledge 2008, ed. with Jean Byrne); Yoga Body, The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press 2010); Gurus of Modern Yoga (Oxford University Press 2014, ed. with Ellen Goldberg); and Roots of Yoga (Penguin Classics, January 2017, with James Mallinson). He has also written articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries on yoga.

His work in the Haṭha Yoga Project focuses primarily on the history of physical practices that were incorporated into or associated with yoga in pre-colonial India. He is collaborating with partners at the Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, on a history of the yogic art and manuscript collections there (from the reign of Maharaja Man Singh, 1803-1843). He is also involved in the critical editing of three of the project’s core texts (the Yogacintāmaṇi, Haṭhasaṃketacandrikā and Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati).

Read some of Mark Singleton’s work.