Section: Staff Profiles

Dimitri Tsintjilonis

Name
Dr Dimitri Tsintjilonis
Title
Lecturer
Organisation
Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh
Address
5.30 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
Telephone
+44 (0)131 650 3934
E-Mail
Research Interests
Death, religion and ritual,Indigenous cosmologies,personhood,Sacred violence,Embodiment and the anthropology of the body
URL
http://www.san.ed.ac.uk/staff/tsintjilonis_dimitri

  

Biographical Statement

Dimitri Tsintjilonis has been carrying out fieldwork among the Sa'dan Toraja of Indonesia (South Sulawesi) over a number of years, concentrating at first on mortuary rites and indigenous notions of personhood, but focusing more recently on religious change and 'the politics' of conversion. Within Indonesia, he has also carried out research in Bali and is hoping to undertake more fieldwork in Central Sulawesi. He is currently completing a book on the Sa'dan Toraja and planning a more comparative text on the anthropology of death.

Selected Publications

2007 'The Death-Bearing Senses in Tana Toraja', Ethnos, 72(2): 173-194

2006 ‘Monsters and Caricatures: spirit-possession in Tana Toraja’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 12: 551-567

2004 ‘Words of Intimacy: re-membering the dead in Buntao’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 10(2): 375-393

2004 'The flow of life in Buntao: Southeast Asian animism re-considered', Bijdragen tot de Taal-Land en Volkenkunde, 160(4): 425-455

2000 'Death and the Sacrifice of Signs: "Measuring" the Dead in Tana Toraja', Oceania, 71 (1): 1-17

2000 'A Head for the Dead: Sacred Violence in Tana Toraja', Archipel, 59 (1): 27-50

Topics interested in supervising

From shamanism and spirit possession, I have supervised postgraduate work on a variety of topics and ethnographic contexts. Apart from research which focuses on Indonesia and Southeast Asia, I am particularly interested in work which explores different cosmologies and attempts to understand the efficacy of ritual patterns - especially in the context of death and mortuary rites. I am also interested in supervising work which focuses on the connections between cosmology and the more pedestrian rhythms of day-to-day life through which agency is ‘sedimented’ in objects, words and everyday activities like cooking, gardening, telling stories, and making friends or enemies. Currently I am supervising eight PhD projects: 'From Spirits to Pollution: Death In Japan', 'The enactment of Past and Future in Afro-Cuban religions', 'Religion and Education amongst the Bonpo', 'Enchantment and "The Word" in a Scottish Fishing Village', 'Catholicism, Language and Community-belonging on Barra', 'Pilgrimage narratives', 'Indigeneity and ethnicity among the Utan (Riau, Indonesia)', and 'Heathen worship communities'.

If you are interested in being supervised by Dimitri Tsintjilonis, please see the links below for more information:

PhD in Social Anthropology

This page was published on 1 November 2011


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