Associate Professor, University of Stockholm
Research fellow, OCHS
Associated fellow, Centre for the Study of Society and Religion, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Biography:

Dr Ferdinando Sardella completed his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Gothenburg in 2010 about the life and thought of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, a modern Hindu revivalist and founder, in 1918 in Calcutta, of what became known as the Gaudiya Math and Mission. The monograph received the Donner Institute Prize at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and was published by Oxford University Press. He completed a postdoctoral program at Uppsala University (2011-2014) and is a research fellow at the OCHS. He has conducted field work in India for a total period of two years and is associated with the Centre for the Study of Society and Religion at Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Research Area/s:

His field of research includes Hinduism, South Asian Studies, Bengal Studies, yoga, New Religious Movements and the History and Sociology of Religion.

He is working at present with a mapping of Hinduism in Europe with Prof. Knut Jacobsen from the University of Bergen. Together they organised an international conference in April 2017 called “Hinduism in Europe“. This research will result in two edited volumes with contributions from researchers from several countries in Europe, which will be published by Brill in the series “Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 2 South Asia” (2020). He also worked on another edited volume, with Lucian Wong from the University of Oxford, with the preliminary title The Legacy of Vaishnavism in Colonial Bengal, which will be published in the Routledge Hindu Studies Series (2020). 

Selected Publications:

Monographs

• Sardella, Ferdinando. Modern Hindu Personalism: the History, Life and Thought of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press (2013). (342 sidor)

Edited volumes

• Sardella, Ferdinando, Daniel Enstedt and Göran Larsson (red.). Religionens varp och trasor/Warp and Rags of Religion: en festskrift till Åke Sander. Göteborg: LIR skrifter, Göteborgs universitet (2016) (214 s.)
• Sardella, Ferdinando och Ruby Sain (eds.). The Sociology of Religion in India: Past, Present and Future. New Delhi: Abhijeet Publications (2013). (237 s.)

Chapters and articles

• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Bhaktisiddhanta and ISKCON” in Torkel Brekke (ed.), The Oxford History of Hinduism: Modern Hinduism. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2019-06-27) s. 72-89.
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Konstruktiv religionskritik och hinduism” in Olof Franck och Mikael Stenmark (eds.), Konstruktiv religionskritik. Stockholm: Sanoma utbildning (2019), s. 13-48. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Ādhunika Bāṃlār Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavatattva” (”Gaudiya Vaishnava Views in Modern Bengal”, in Bengali) in Bhabanagara: International Journal of Bengal Studies, vol. 4, february 2016, s. 507-518.
• Sardella, Ferdinando, “The Concept of ‘Transcendence’ in Modern Western Philosophy and in Twentieth Century Hindu Thought”, Argument, Biannual Philosophical Journal (2016).
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Phenomenology and Yoga in Åke Sander’s Early and Late Works”, in Daniel Enstedt, Göran Larsson & Ferdinando Sardella (eds.), Religionens varp och trasor/Warp and Rags of Religion: en festskrift till Åke Sander. Göteborg: LIR skrifter, Göteborgs universitet (2016).
• Sardella Ferdinando, “Hinduism“, in Aaron J. Ghiloni (red.), World Religions and Their Missions. New York: Peter Lang (2015), s. 153-181. 
• Sardella Ferdinando. “Colonial Bengal and Bhaktivinoda through the Lens of Bhaktisiddhanta”, Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 23.1 (2014), s. 189-204. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando, ”Himalaya mellan Bollywood och yoga” in Eva Hellman (red.), Religion och berg, Skellefteå: Artos & Norma (2014), s. 217-228. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Hälsoterapi eller tro? Yoga i teori och praktik” in Göran Ståhle and Jessica Moberg (eds.), Helig hälsa: helandemetoder i det mångreligiösa Sverige. Stockholm: Dialogos (2013), s. 130-144. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati” in Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Knut Jakobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, Vasudha Narayanan (eds.), Leiden: Brill (2013). Vol. V, s. 415-421.
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “The Hindu Turn towards Nondualism: The Case of Swami Vivekananda” in Ferdinando Sardella och Ruby Sain (eds.), The Sociology of Religion in India: Past, Present and Future, New Delhi: Abhijeet Publications (2013), s. 166-187. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando & Abhishek Ghosh. “Text Migration: The Translation and Modern Reception of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa” in The Bhāgavata Purāṇa: Sacred Text and Living Tradition, Ravi Gupta and Kenneth Valpey (eds.), New York: Columbia University Press (2013), s. 221-248.
• Sardella, Ferdinando, “Hinduism in Sweden” in Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Knut Jakobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, Vasudha Narayanan (eds.), Leiden: Brill, (2013). Vol. V, s. 312-316.
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Religious Experiments in Colonial Calcutta: Modern Hinduism and bhakti among the Indian Middle Class” in Religion and the Body. Tore Ahlbäck and Björn Dahla (red.), Åbo: Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History (2011), s. 364-380. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Shifts in Burmese Buddhism: the Practice Lineage of S. N. Goenka”, Journal of Sociology, Kolkata: Jadavpur University, vol. 3, nr. 3, (March 2010), ISSN 0976 – 5212, s. 1-14. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati: A Personalist View of Nature”, Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 18.2 (2010), s. 43-66. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. ”Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (1874-1937)”, Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 15.2 (2008), 95-122. 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. ”Hinduism i Sverige”, in Religion i Sverige, Ingvar Svanberg och David Westerlund (eds.), Stockholm: Dialogos (2008). 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. ”Krishnarörelsen” in Religion i Sverige, Ingvar Svanberg och David Westerlund (eds.), Stockholm: Dialogos (2008). 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. ”Krishnaskolan, mellan öst och vast”, in Religiösa friskolor i Sverige: historiska och nutida perspektiv, Jenny Berglund and Göran Larsson, (eds.), Lund: Studentlitteratur (2007), s. 76-93). 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. “Neither man nor God—Perspectives on the guru in the Hare Krishna Movement in Sweden” in FINYAR, year 2, s. 76-93 (2005). 
• Sardella, Ferdinando. ”Prinsessa och asket. Samtida tolkningar av Mirabai” in Cakra: Journal for Indian Religions, Lunds universitet, Center för teologi och religionsvetenskap, nr. 1, s. 36-49 (2004).