Manon Hedenborg White
Associate Professor/Senior lecturer

Presentation

I am Associate Professor of History of Religions and research coordinator at the Department of Society, Culture and Identity (SKI). My research focuses on alternative religions from the late-19th century until today, including esotericism, New Religious Movements, and contemporary ("new age) spirituality. I have a particular interest in broader questions of gender, sexuality, and authority in religions.

In 2017, I obtained a doctoral degree in History of Religions at Uppsala University. My doctoral dissertation analyzed the construction of femininity and feminine sexuality in modern esotericism. Titled "The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western Esotericism", my dissertation was published as a monograph by Oxford University Press in 2020. The book has been described by a reviewer as "one of the most important contributions to the field of contemporary occultism and alternative spiritualities in recent years, as well as to the intersections between gender and contemporary forms of religion more broadly".

In 2018, I was granted funding for an international postdoctoral project from the Swedish Research Council. My postdoc project analysed women's authority in the esoteric religion Thelema. During my postdoc, I was a visiting researcher at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam.

In 2019, I co-founded (with prof. Christine Ferguson) the interdisciplinary research network Esotericism, Gender, and Sexuality Network. I am a member of the board of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, and the editorial boards of the series Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism (Oxford University Press) and Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities (Palgrave Macmillan).

I am currently supervising three PhD projects: on constructions of gender in contemporary European Tantra; on the reception of Tantra in German occultism; and on the connections between esotericism, literature, and queerness in the reception of the demoness Lilith around the year 1900. I am always interested in hearing about new projects within my areas of interest.