Hatha Yoga Project, SOAS University of London

The Haṭha Yoga Project (HYP) is a five-year (2015-2020) research project funded by the European Research Council and based at SOAS, University of London which aims to chart the history of physical yoga practice by means of philology, i.e. the study of texts on yoga, and ethnography, i.e. fieldwork among practitioners of yoga. The project team consists of four researchers based at SOAS and two at the École française d’Extrême Orient, Pondicherry. The project’s primary outputs will be critical editions and annotated translations of ten Sanskrit texts on haṭha yoga, four monographs, and a range of journal articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries. In September 2016 a workshop for twenty scholars working on critical editions of Sanskrit texts on yoga was held at SOAS and All Souls, Oxford. A public conference will be held at SOAS in 2020. You can find out more about the project at and more about studying yoga at SOAS at