University of Oxford

Research Interests

Dr Shrestha is currently engaged in carrying out research among the Nepalese diaspora in the UK and in Belgium. His PhD in anthropology from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands (2002), deals with Newar culture and rituals (Kathmandu Valley, Nepal). He was a postoctoral fellow at the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona, Switzerland (2004-06). He was researcher and assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Leiden University, and taught politics of South and Southeast Asia (2006-07). He has also been a visiting fellow at the Department of History, University of Leiden (2007-08).

The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, awarded Dr Shrestha the Jan Gonda Fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden (2001-02). The University of Cambridge, UK, awarded him a Frederick Williamson Memorial Fund to carry out a research among the Nepalese diaspora in Sikkim, India (2003). He did his Master's in Political Science at the Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and was lecturer at the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Kathmandu, Nepal. He collaborated with the late Bert van den Hoek, a Dutch anthropologist at Leiden University, in carrying out anthropological fieldwork in the Kathmandu Valley, and jointly published several articles.

Dr Shrestha made the award-winning ethnographic documentary Sacrifice of Serpents: The Festival of Indrayani, Kathmandu 1992/94 (Leiden, 1997) together with the late Van den Hoek and Dirk J. Nijland. The Jan Gonda Foundation awarded him grants to make documentary films on the rituals performed at the Agnimatha, the Vedic Fire Temple in Patan, Nepal (2004 and 2005). Dr Shrestha has conducted fieldwork in Nepal and India, and has published widely on Nepalese religious rituals, Hinduism, Buddhism, ethnic nationalism, the Maoist movement, and political development in Nepal.

Bal Gopal Shrestha's publications.