How Yoga Came to Britain by Suzanne Newcombe (Hindu Scholars, #4)

Suzanne Newcombe is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at the Open University (UK) where she researches modern yoga from a sociological and social historical perspective. Raised in Kansas, Suzanne became fascinated by religion which became a formal focus of study as an undergraduate at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Exploring living religion further, she completed an MSc in Religion in Contemporary Society in the Sociology Department of the London School of Economics. Her PhD study was in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge where she researched the popularisation of yoga and ayurvedic medicine in Britain. Suzanne has broad and active research interests in the sociology and social history of religion and extensive specialist knowledge in new and minority religious movements in modern and contemporary Britain and the modern history of yoga. Her monograph on Yoga in Britain was published by Equinox in 2019, she also recently edited with Karen O'Brien-Kop the Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation (2021). Suzanne is the Honorary Director of Inform based at Theology and Religious Studies at King's College London, an independent charitable organisation which provides information about minority religions and sects which is as accurate, up-to-date and as evidence-based as possible. She is founding editor of the Journal of Yoga Studies (2017-present) and the Modern Yoga Research website (2009-present). Between 2015-2020 she was part of a 5-year project funded by the European Research Council (Horizon 2020) entitled 'Medicine, Immortality and Moksha: Entangled Histories of Yoga, Ayurveda and Alchemy in South Asia', see: ayuryog.org/ for more details.