People

Research Faculty

IKEGAME Aya

IKEGAME Aya

Associate Professor
-2021,
Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia
ayaikegame[at]
Research theme: Religion and Democracy in South Asia

Religion and Democracy in South Asia

Research Topics


After completing her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh in 2007 (a historical anthropological study of the South Indian kingdom of Mysore), Dr Aya Ikegame won an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship (2007-8) at Edinburgh. She was then employed as a postdoctoral research fellow on an AHRC/ESRC project on monastery-run schools in South India (2009-10) at Edinburgh University’s Centre for South Asian Studies. She also worked (2010-11) as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary India Area Studies in the National Museum of Ethnology, Japan and as a Research Associate for the ERC-funded project ‘OECUMENE: Citizenship after Orientalism’ at the Open University, the UK.

Aya gained her first degrees in Architectural science from Waseda University (Japan) and then studied the Conservation of Historical Monuments at Leuven University (Belgium) before taking up the study of cultural anthropology at the University of Kyoto. Her research interests range across several continents and she is fluent in Kannada, English, Japanese and French as well as having a basic knowledge of Hindi and Sanskrit. However her expertise is focused on the social anthropology of India and Japan with a particular interest in kingship, big men, and the religious and quasi-religious institutions that provide civic services parallel to those of the modern state.

Her recent publications include The Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore from 1799 to the present (Routledge, 2012) and The Guru in South Asia: New interdisciplinary Perspectives (co-edted with Jacob Copeman, Routledge 2012).

Research activities

Books
  • Ikegame, Aya. Princely India Re-Imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore from 1799 to the present (South Asian Edition): Rutledge, 2016.4.
  • Ikegame, Aya 『Princely India Re-imagined: A Historical Anthropology of Mysore from 1799 to the present (Routledge/Edinburgh South Asian Studies Series)』 Routledge、2012.8. [Link]
Edited Books
  • Copeman, Jacob、Aya Ikegame 編 『The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge/Edinburgh South Asian Studies)』 Routledge、2014.2. [Link]
  • Ikegame, Aya, and Andrea Major, eds. Princely Spaces and Domestic Voices: new perspectives on Indian princely states. Vol. 46 of The Indian Economic and Social History Review: Sage, 2009.
Articles and Book Chapters
  • Ikegame, Aya. “To Whom was Power Transferred? Overlapping Sovereignties in Modern India.” The Princely States and the Making of Modern India. Edited by D. A. Prasanna, and K. Sadashiva. Manipal: Manipal University Press, 2017: 38-52.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Moral Transcendence? the guru in democracy.”Seminar: Seminar Publications, New Delhi, no. 693 2017.5: 56-58.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Overlapping Sovereignities: Gurus and Citizenship.” Citizenship after Orientalism. Edited by E. Isin. New York: Palgrave, 2015: 101-119.
  • Ikegame, Aya, and Crispin Bates. “‘Time gentlemen’: Bangalore and its drinking culture.” Cities in South Asia. Edited by Crispin Bates, and Minoru Mio. Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2015: 326-342.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Karnataka: Caste, Dominance and Social Change.” The Modern Anthropology of India. Edited by P. Berger, and F. Heidemann. London: Routledge, 2013: 121-135.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Mathas, gurus and citizenship: the state and communities in colonial India.”Citizenship Studies 16, no. 5/6 2012.8: 689-703.
  • Ikegame, Aya, and Jacob Copeman. “Guru logics.”HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2, no. 1 2012.5: 289-336.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Why do backward castes need their own gurus? The social and political significance of new caste-based monasteries in Karnataka.”Contemporary South Asia 18, no. 1 2010.3: 57-70.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Space of Kinship, Space of Empire: marriage strategies amongst the Mysore royals in the 19th and 20th centuries.”Indian Economic and Social History Review 46, no. 3 2009: 343-372.
  • Ikegame, Aya, and Andrea Major. “Introduction.”Indian Economic and Social History Review 46, no. 3 2009: 293-300.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “The capital of Rajadharma: modern space and religion in colonial Mysore.”International Journal of Asian Studies 4 2007: 15-44.
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Becoming Gentlemen: the politics of education among the ruling caste in the princely state of Mysore.”Journal of Deccan Studies 4, no. 1 2006: 19-48.
Book Reviews
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Book Review: When a Goddess Dies: Worshipping Ma Anandamayi after Her Death by Orianne Aymard.”International Journal of Asian Studies 13, no. 1 (2016.1): 116-117.
Conference
  • Ikegame, Aya. “Was power transferred to whom?: Princes and Gurus in Modern Mysore.” Presented at the Prof. Achuta Rao Memorial International Conference on “Power, Resistance and Sovereignty in Princely South India”, Mysore University, India, February 17 2017.

Experience

YearEducation
YearAcademic experience