Research Fellow

Marleen Thaler is a Research Fellow at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Vienna and Communication Manager at the University’s Research Centre “Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society” (RaT). She studied Religious Studies (M.A. 2019; Ph.D. 2024), Oriental Studies (B.A. 2017), and Social and Cultural Anthropology (B.A. 2013) at the University of Vienna and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. From 2019 to 2022, she was an FWF Fellow at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, and has been a visiting scholar at the ETH Zürich (2022), at UC Riverside (2022), and at UC Santa Barbara (2023). Her current projects include publishing her monograph on John Michell’s Sacred Place Theory (Equinox), co-editing a volume on Subtle Energies (Brill), and organising the annual conference of the European Academy of Religion (EuARe) at the University of Vienna. Her main research interests include the transformation of religion, alternative religious currents, the modern history of yoga, religion and technology, eco-spirituality, religious traditionalism, and religion and drugs. As a Research Fellow at the Department of Religious Studies, she examines the use of machines in alternative religion.