Calum Blaikie is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISA. After gaining his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent (UK) in 2014, his research focused on the sourcing, production, circulation and regulation of Tibetan medicines in Himalayan India, as well as the integration of Tibetan medical practitioners into public healthcare. He joined ISA to work on Stephan Kloos’ Reassembling Tibetan Medicine project, resulting in numerous publications including the volume Asian Medical Industries: Contemporary Perspectives on Traditional Pharmaceuticals (co-edited with Stephan Kloos, 2022, Routledge), which examines the emerging dynamics of traditional pharmaceutical industries in China, India, Japan, Mongolia and Nepal. Calum then went on to lead the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project Integrating Traditional Medicine: Sowa Rigpa and the State in India at ISA (2021-24), focusing on Sowa Rigpa institutions as contested sites of political representation and the reconfiguration of medical knowledge and practice. Calum is currently engaged in the Climate and Contemporary Transformation of Vernacular Architecture project, exploring interactions between vernacular buildings, traditional construction skills and natural building materials in the context of accelerating climate change and socioeconomic transformation in the Alps and Himalayas. He has published extensively in leading journals such as Current Anthropology, Social Science & Medicine, Anthropology & Medicine, Frontiers in Human Dynamics, East Asian Science, Technology & Society, Asian Medicine, and Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry.
