aesthetics of religion, materiality, gender and queer anthropology, anthropology of secularity and nonreligion

South Asia, India

Stefan Binder is senior researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK), University of Zurich. He is currently developing a research project on the political and moral economy of marginal masculinities and queer life in Hyderabad (India). Before joining ISEK, he was part of the DFG priority program “Ästhetische Eigenzeiten” at University of Göttingen (CeMIS), where he worked on a postdoctoral project on the aesthetic production and manipulation of multiple temporalities in the context of Shi'i mourning rituals and media practices in Hyderabad. He received his PhD in 2017 from Utrecht University with an ethnographic study on lived atheism and secular activism in Telugu-speaking South India, after graduating in Religious Studies, Cultural Anthropology, and Indology from University of Munich.

Publications