FWF Fellow (2024–2028)

Samuel Thévoz is an FWF Fellow (2024–2028) at the Department of Religious Studies of the University of Vienna, where he has previously been a Research Fellow (2023–2024). He holds a licence ès lettres (2001; French Studies [major], Religious Studies, English Studies) and a Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of Lausanne (2008; his doctoral thesis was awarded the Faculty Prize). Subsequently, he was junior research fellow at Sorbonne University (Paris-3 and Paris-4 Universities) sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF; 2007–2008); junior lecturer at the Department of French Studies (Faculty of Arts) of the University of Lausanne; advanced researcher sponsored by the SNF (2012–2015; Paris, Munich, Tōkyō); research fellow sponsored by the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies (2016–2017); and invited scholar at the French National Institute for Art History (2022). He has recently received an Ashoka Grant from the Khyentse Foundation (2022–2023). Since 2018, he has worked as an independent scholar associated with the THALIM-research unit (UMR 7172 “Theory and History of Modern Arts and Literature”—Sorbonne University nouvelle Paris-3, National Center for Scientific Research, École normale supérieure). A specialist of French literary and cultural history, he has chiefly worked at the crossroads of Literary Studies and Religious Studies. His main research interests include the perception of Tibet in European travel literature, academia, and esotericism; French and Swiss women travelers to Asia; the first travel accounts of Tibetans and Asian Buddhists to France and Europe; the cultural history of Tibetan and Buddhist studies in France; Indian religions in Francophone Mauritian literature; the reception of Buddhism and yoga in literary, theatrical, artistic, scholarly, and esoteric milieus from a global perspective, with special attention to France, Switzerland, and Belgium, the fin de siècle period and early twentieth century, and women’s productions, networks, and agency. As a Research Fellow at the Department he works on the reception of and engagement with Tibetan Buddhism in France and Europe, with a focus on the life and work of Alexandra David-Neel.