Bio

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 currently leads a three-year FWF-funded project at the University of Vienna (2018-2021) on Tibetan ritual and medical understandings of potency. 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, forthcoming).