Anna Andreeva

Biography

Anna Andreeva has earned her doctorate at University of Cambridge in 2006. She spent a year at Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard, before returning to Cambridge to take up a position of Margaret Smith Research Fellow in Japanese Religions at Girton College in 2007. She joined the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe" in April 2010. During 2012-2013, she was a visiting research fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto, before coming back to Heidelberg. Anna's research focuses on religious and cultural history of premodern Japan, particularly, the relationship between the systems of knowledge and beliefs related to Esoteric Buddhism and their impact on the fields of the religious and cultural production (for example, the worship of Japanese deities, kami). She also works on Buddhism and the cultural history of pregnancy, childbirth and child-rearing in premodern Japan, and the cross-cultural development and transmission of medical knowledge, particularly that related to female body and gender, in Asia and Europe.

Research Interest

Cultural and religious history of Japan and East Asia, Buddhism, sacred sites, pilgrimage, ritual, economies of the sacred Buddhism and medicine, history of science and medicine, gender, childbirth and women's health Cultural mobility, history of Buddhist concepts, conceptual metaphor