Department of Religious Studies

Richard King

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Associate Professor of Religion and Culture in the Divinity School

Senior Research Fellow in the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture

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B.A. Hull University, UK, 1987

Ph.D. Lancaster University, UK, 1993

Richard King was formerly Professor of Asian Philosophy and Comparative Religion and Chair of the Religion department at Derby University (UK) and before that was Reader and Chair of Religious Studies at Stirling University in Scotland. He has served as visiting professor and guest lecturer at Liverpool Hope and Cambridge Universities and has delivered public lectures at universities in Europe and the United States.

Professor King's main research interests include: Indian philosophical schools (especially Advaita Vedanta), Mahayana Buddhist thought in India, the impact of coloniality on Indian wisdom traditions, poststructuralist and postcolonial approaches to the study of religion, and the comparative study of mysticism and spirituality.

He has published a number of articles on various aspects of Hindu and Buddhist thought and theory and method in the study of religion and is the author of four books. His publications include:-

Books

• Early Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism: The Mahayana Context of the Gaudapadiya-Karika (State University of New York Press, 1995)
  • An exploration of the impact of Buddhist thought upon the philosophical formation of the Hindu school of Advaita (non-dualist) Vedanta
• Orientalism and Religion. Postcolonial Theory, India and "the Mystic East" (Routledge, 1999)
  • A wide-ranging discussion of orientalism and postcolonial theory in relation to the study of religions, with a specific focus on issues related to the representation of South Asian Hindu and Buddhist traditions in the modern era.
• Indian Philosophy. An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought (Edinburgh University Press, 1999/ Georgetown University Press, 2000).
  • A thematically-oriented overview of the various schools of classical Indian thought with some discussion of the issues confronting those interested in a global and postcolonial approach to ‘philosophy'.
• Selling Spirituality. The Silent Takeover of Religion (Routledge, 2005, co-authored with Jeremy Carrette)
  • A critique of the impact of globalizing forms of capitalism on contemporary constructions of "spirituality".

Recent Articles

• "Cartographies of the Imagination, Legacies of Colonialism: The Discourse of Religion and the Mapping of Indic Traditions" in Evam. Forum on Indian Representations Vol 3, Nos. 1 and 2: 272-89, January 2004.
• "Colonialism and Buddhism" in Robert Buswell (ed)., Encyclopaedia of Buddhism (Palgrave-Macmillan), 2004.
• "Asian Traditions and Mysticism: The Legacy of William James in the Study of Religions", in Jeremy Carrette (ed).,William James and the Varieties of Religious Experience. A Centenary Celebration (London and New York: Routledge, November 2004): 106-123.
• "Orientalism and the Study of Religions" in John Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion (Routledge, 2005)
• "Mysticism and Spirituality" in John Hinnells (ed.), The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion (Routledge. 2005)

Professor King is also co-editor of a volume of papers on Religion and Violence in South Asia (Routledge, 2006) with Professor John Hinnells (Liverpool Hope). He is currently working on issues arising from the classification of Asian wisdom traditions as "religions" and on a monograph examining the history of the rise of the concept of "eastern spirituality". His research continues to explore the interface between postcolonial studies / Indian philosophy / mysticism and spirituality / religion and capitalism / and theory and method debates in the study of religions.