Barbara GERKE (PI)
Barbara Gerke (M.Sc. Medical Anthropology and D.Phil. Social Anthropology, University of Oxford) completed a DFG (German Research Foundation) principal investigator project on Tibetan mercury practices at Humboldt University of Berlin (2011–2015) and an FWF (Austrian Science Fund) Lise-Meitner senior research fellowship (2015–2018) at the University of Vienna, researching biographies of Tibetan precious pills. She is the author of Long Lives and Untimely Deaths: Life-Span Concepts and Longevity Practices among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills, India (Brill, 2012) and Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practice (Heidelberg University Publishing, 2021).
Jan VAN DER VALK (Postdoc)
Dr. Jan van der Valk is a scholar-practitioner with a multi-disciplinary academic training in the fields of biology and anthropology. He was awarded the Ethnobotany Prize for Best Student in 2012, and the main findings of his MSc dissertation were published in Herbal Medicine. Jan’s interests revolve around the techno-scientific and material processes that transform natural substances into Tibetan medical formulas, which was also the main theme of his doctoral dissertation (University of Kent, 2017). He studied Sowa Rigpa with his teacher Gen. Pasang Yonten Arya for more than a decade.
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Calum BLAIKIE
Calum Blaikie holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Kent (2014). He has conducted research and applied work on Sowa Rigpa in the Indian Himalayas and Nepal since 2001, focusing on materia medica flows, medicine production and distribution, and therapeutic economics. After successfully leading the award-winning international NGO Nomad RSI for over ten years, he completed his PhD before conducting a postdoctoral fellowship within the French National Research Agency’s (ANR) Pharmasud project on the traditional pharmaceutical industry in India. From 2015 to 2019 he held a research position at the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Social Anthropology on the ERC-funded project “Reassembling Tibetan Medicine.” Blaikie’s has published in numerous edited volumes and journals, including Current Anthropology, Social Science & Medicine and Anthropology & Medicine. He is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Austrian Science Fund project “Integrating Traditional Medicine: Sowa Rigpa and the State in India” (2021–2025), based at the Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Calum’s contribution to the project consists of providing expertise on the socio-economic contexts of small-scale medicine making and providing valuable data and insights from his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, especially on consecration rituals and the use of blessed materials.
Tawni TIDWELL
Dr. Tidwell is a Tibetan medical doctor and biocultural anthropologist. Her current work bridges Western and Tibetan medical approaches to wellness at the Center for Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin-Madison, while seeing patients in her private clinical practice. She recently completed a one-year postdoc with the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Social Anthropology (ISA) on the ERC-funded Project RATIMED (Reassembling Tibetan Medicine) that is integral to her ongoing work on pharmacological lineages in eastern Tibet and their particular approaches to medicinal compounding. She is also an advisor and associate translator for the Tibetan Community Healthy Network, a Tibetan language-based health education resource for Tibetan populations.
Tawni’s role in the project is to analyze concepts of potency, active/dynamic substances and medicine/toxin paradigms in the Four Tantras (Rgyud bzhi) and its most prominent commentaries.
Stuti SINGH
Stuti Singh completed her BSc in biomedical sciences at Delhi University (2018), and an MSc degree in anthropology from Amity University (2020). Her dissertation explores traditional medical practices for treating snakebites in Madhya Pradesh. These findings were published in the edited volume Indigenous People and Nature: Insights for Social, Ecological and Technological Sustainability. She was the principal investigator of the project “Amchi of Old Days and Modern Amchi” (2021-2023) funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Stuti has been collaborating with us since March 2023, conducting fieldwork on medicine making tools among amchi in Spiti. She co-authored a chapter with Barbara for the book Among Tibetan Materialities, edited by Emma Martin, Trine Brox, and Diana Lange (HASP 2025).
Mridul SURBHI
Mridul Surbhi (Philosophy BA, Social Anthropology MA) is a Doctoral Scholar and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Her work centers the lived experiences of non-institutionally trained amchi in the Indian Himalayas. She conducts long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Kinnaur, Spiti, and Kullu (Himachal Pradesh), focusing on Sowa Rigpa knowledge transmission, ethics, nonhuman agents, as well as the impact of conservation-development paradigms and state policies. She has previously worked in the capacity of researcher and program coordinator with the Dalai Lama and Tong-Len Trust in Dharamsala (2015–2018), and is currently part of a local amchi self-help group involved in the collection and preservation of medicinal plants in liaison with the Spiti Amchi Sangh Board, the Department of AYUSH, and other government agencies.
Mridul has been collaborating with us since March 2023, researching Sowa Rigpa among Spiti amchi. She co-authored a chapter with Jan for the book Among Tibetan Materialities, edited by Emma Martin, Trine Brox, and Diana Lange (HASP 2025).