Axel Michaels

From 1983 to 1984, Michaels was involved in a project about the initiation rites in Nepal in collaboration with the German Research Foundation. A further project in Nepal between 1984 and 1991 focused on rituals at the Pashupatinatha-Temple. From 1998 to 2002, Axel Michaels was engaged in the project “Text and Context of the Mahima-Dharma-Movement in Orissa”. This project was followed by a research on religious and divine maps of Benares (1999-2003). Both projects were supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2002 he started a project in co-operation with Niels Gutschow which examined life cycle rituals in Nepal. Connected to the project was the shooting and production of the films Handling Death (2005) and Belfruit and loincloth (2007), realized in collaboration with Niels Gutschow and Christian Bau. Later, he also worked on a project aiming at the translation and publication of the so called “Wright-chronicle”, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, 2011 to 2012). Currently, he is working on two research projects. The first project started in 2014, called “Religious and Legal Documents of Pre-modern Nepal”, and aims at a publication and a digital database of religious and legal documents and texts from pre-modern Nepal. The second, the “Nepal Heritage Documentation Project” is a co-operation with Christiane Brosius and started in 2018.

Born in Hamburg, Axel Michaels studied Indology, philosophy and law in Munich, Freiburg, Hamburg and Benares. After he completed his dissertation in 1978 summa cum laude, Michaels worked as a research assistant at the Museum of Ethnology in Hamburg and at the University of Münster. He then worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Indology at the University of Kiel (1980 until 1992), meanwhile also holding the position as the Director of the Nepal Research Center (Kathmandu) from 1981 to 1983. From 1992 to 1996 Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Bern. In 1986, he was Spalding Visiting Fellow at the Wolfson College, Oxford. Since 1996, Michaels is professor of classical Indology at Heidelberg University’s South Asia Institute, which he managed as Director from 1999 to 2002. Besides, he was Speaker of the interdisciplinary project “Cartography Programme on Benares”. In 2001, he was elected as the Speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 619 “Ritual Dynamics”. During the years 2004 to 2011, he was Speaker of the German Research Foundation Council “Cultural Anthropology, Religious Studies, Non-European Cultures”. Axel Michaels was co-founder and co-director of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” since 2007 until 2017. Furthermore, he became Head Coordinator of the Heidelberg Center South Asia (2014 until 2019) and Member of AG Zukunft II at Heidelberg University in 2010. Since 2010 he is Heidelberg University Rector’s delegate for cooperation with India. Axel Michaels is full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities since 2006, where he functioned as vice president from 2016 to 2020. Since 2020 he is Chairman of the board of trustees of the von Portheim-Stiftung.

Axel Michaels (born 26 May 1949) is a Professor of Classical Indology and Religious Studies at Heidelberg University, former Co-Director of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" (2014-2019) and since 2014 the Director of the research project Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal. He also was the Speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 619 “Ritual Dynamics” from 2002 until 2013.