Axel Michaels

Axel Michaels (born 1949) is a German Indologist. From 1996 onward, he taught Classical Indology at Heidelberg University and headed its Department of South Asian Cultural and Religious History from 1996 to 2016. He was spokesperson of the German Research Foundation’s Collaborative Research Centre “Ritual Dynamics” from 2001 to 2012 and founding director of the excellence cluster “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” from 2007 to 2017. Earlier in his career, he directed the Nepal Research Centre in Kathmandu. Michaels was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and received, among other honors, the Manfred Lautenschläger Research Prize. His publications include “Ritual and Society in India,” “Hinduism: Past and Present,” and “Culture and History of Nepal.”