Dr Ruth Westoby

Dr Ruth Westoby is a researcher in yoga and Asian Religions and a yoga practitioner. Ruth is postdoctoral research fellow in Jaina Studies at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Here Ruth is undertaking a research project on technologies of the body, including yoga, asceticism and the soteriological and medical understandings of the body that underly such practices. In addition, Ruth is an Associate Researcher at Inform, based at King’s College London, researching menstruation in contemporary religions. Ruth holds a PhD from SOAS University of London on ‘The Body in Early Haṭha Yoga’ (2024), supervised by Professor James Mallinson and Dr Richard Williams, funded by CHASE-AHRC and awarded without corrections. Ruth is currently working on a book project from her doctoral thesis ‘Reversing Reproduction in Haṭha Yoga’. Her research focuses on the materiality of the body and sexuality from critical theoretical and medical humanities perspectives.

Ruth has published early research findings in the peer-reviewed Religions of South Asia (2021) and numerous public articles. She teaches MA ‘Theory and Method in the Study of Religion’ alongside undergraduate courses such as Religion, Ecology and Politics as Visiting Lecturer at Roehampton University (2023-2026). As a practitioner Ruth collaborated with the SOAS Haṭha Yoga Project (2015-2020) interpreting postures from an 18th-century text teaching a precursor of modern yoga, the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati. See www.enigmatic.yoga for footage and publications.