Marion Wettstein is an anthropologist, ethnographer, scientist of religion and curator with a comparative approach to religious, performative, and material practices in between Europe and Asia. With her regional focus on the extended eastern Himalayas, she completed her dissertation on textile traditions in Northeast India at the University of Zurich in 2011. Her recent postdoc research project examines ritual dance and performative traditions in eastern Nepal. She is postdoc assistant at the Institute for the Science of Religion and Central Asian Studies at the University of Bern.
Her thematic interests include the anthropology of religions and religious studies, material religion, ritual studies, mythology, oral traditions and their scripturalisation, textile design, material culture, craft, dress and fashion theory, transfer of knowledge, the anthropology of dance, theatre, performance, and embodiment, visual anthropology and ethnographic drawing, museum anthropology, local concepts of the person and cosmology, the relation of science and art, gender and sexuality studies, trans-local relations, and diaspora dynamics. Major publications include “Naga Textiles: Design, Technique, Meaning and Effect of a Local Craft Tradition in Northeast India” (2014) and “Naga Identities: Changing local cultures in Northeast India” (2008).
Recent lectures:
“The origins of ‘vajra dance’ revisited” at the 16th IATS Seminar in Prague, July 2022.
“Chamdam status rituals among the Dumi Rai of Eastern Nepal”. Research colloquium, Institute for the Science of Religion, University of Bern, 01.04.2022. See Lecture abstract