Rate My Professor Nina Mirnig

Nina Mirnig is Professor of Cultural and Intellectual History of Premodern South Asia in the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, at the University of Vienna. She holds a BA with First Class Honours (2004), MSt with Distinction (2005), and DPhil (2010/2011) in Oriental Studies/Sanskrit from the University of Oxford. Following her doctorate, Mirnig held a postdoctoral position at the University of Groningen (2010–2013) on the Skandapurāṇa project, was Gonda Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies in Leiden (2013–2014), Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2014), and occupied various postdoctoral and research roles at the Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual History of Asia, Austrian Academy of Sciences (2015–2025), culminating in a tenure-track Research Associate/Junior Group Leader position. She served as External Lecturer at the University of Vienna (2016–2024) and assumed her professorship in May 2025. Additionally, she is Acting Director of CIRDIS and Key Researcher in the FWF Cluster of Excellence Eurasian Transformations (since 2023).

Mirnig's research centers on the religious, cultural, and intellectual history of premodern South Asia (500–1200 CE), particularly the literature, rituals, history, and dissemination of early Śaivism and tantric traditions; the religious and cultural history of early Nepal and the Himalayan region; South Asian epigraphic and manuscript cultures at the intersection of philology, archaeology, and art history; cultural contact and knowledge transfer in the Indosphere; and cultural heritage preservation in Nepal. Her major publications include the monograph Liberating the Liberated: Early Śaiva Tantric Death Rites (2019), co-edited volumes Tantric Communities in Context (Mirnig, Rastelli, Eltschinger 2019) and Epigraphical Evidence for the Formation and Rise of Early Śaivism (Bosma & Mirnig 2013), contributions to the Tāntrikābhidhānakośa, and numerous articles on Śaiva traditions, Nepalese cultural history, and Sanskrit inscriptions. Awards include the FWF Elise Richter Prize (2019) for Mapping Piety, Politics, and Power in Early Medieval Nepal, election to the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2020), and corresponding membership in the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2026). She co-edits Medieval Worlds (since 2025), serves on editorial boards including Harrassowitz's Afro-Eurasian Transformations series and Puṣpikā, and has organized numerous international conferences and workshops on South Asian religions and Nepalese heritage.