Karen O'Brien- Kop

I gained my PhD at SOAS University of London in an intertextual study of early South Asian texts describing mind-body philosophies - focusing on the Hindu and Buddhist Sanskrit treatises Patanjalayogasastra, the Abhidharmakosabhasya and the Yogacarabhumisastra. After a post as Senior Teaching Fellow at SOAS, I joined the University of Roehampton to lecture in Asian religions and ethics, before joining King’s College London.

I have published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals on Hindu and Buddhist religions and philosophies, including Journal of Indian Philosophy. In 2021 I published a monograph, Rethinking 'Classical Yoga' and Buddhism: Meditation, Metaphor and Materiality (Bloomsbury Academic) and I co-edited the Routledge Research Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies in 2020. A third book is due in 2023, the Philosophy of the Yogasutra: An Introduction for the seires Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies.

I am currently serving co-chair on the research unit 'Indian and Chinese Religions Compared' at the American Academy of Religion and a co-editor for the peer-reviewed journal Religions of South Asia (Equinox Publishing).

• Hinduism
• Buddhism
• South Asian mind-body philosophies
• Sanskrit texts
• Theory and method of religion
• Religion, race and decolonization