Lisa Bukhave Jensen

I am a PhD-student in the History of Religion with a specific focus on development and cultural change in Indo-European religions. I have a wide knowledge of ancient religions and languages from the Eurasian peninsula, but I am also interested in theories and methods within the Study of Religion. My main interest is the symbolic systems of religions and how these are expressed in ritual context.

Jag har en kandidat-utbildning i Religionsvetenskap och Klassiska studier från Aarhus Universitet, Danmark, och en masters-utbildning i Religionsvetenskap från samma Universitet. Utöver det har jag varit gäststudent på Indoeuropeiska studier, avdelning för Lingvistik, Köpenhamns Universitet.

My research area is the religions of Indo-European-speaking groups. The linguistic relationship between the Indo-European cultures provides a unique opportunity to study how cultures from a shared point of departure develop and adapt when faced with new milieus and social realities. Thus, I wish to combine cognitive, cultural, and human evolution theories with classical Indo-European linguistics and comparative text analysis.

My thesis will mainly explore the relationship between developments in language, religion, and power structures in Indo-European cultures by focusing on ways of addressing gods and kings. My point of departure will be the Indo-Iranian title *asura and its later developments in Vedic and Avestan religion. This I will compare to studies of the (linguistically) related Hittite title Ḫaššu (meaning "king") and the Old Norse Æsir. Through comparing these studies, I hope to uncover how religious symbolic systems are affected by societal developments and different milieus, creating distinguished cultures through selection- and adaptation processes.