Dr Julia Shaw

Academic position: Associate Professor in South Asian Archaeology

Department: Institute of Archaeology

Biography

I have been carrying out landscape-based research on religion, socio-ecological change and water and land-use in South Asia since 1998. My current work focuses on the deep history of medico-environmental worldviews and its relevance for discourse on the global biodiversity and climate-change crises. My forthcoming book focuses on interactions between lowland irrigated agriculture and upland forest-based lifeways, and corresponding monastic, state, and 'alternative’ community governmentalities of land and water resources in India. It also draws on current grassroots environmental activism over river and forest conservation, and management of urban natures, weeds and insects, and its relevance for reconstructing past landscapes and identifying voices of marginal, oppressed and dissenting agencies and attitudes regarding the entwined socio-ecological and medical outcomes of environmental and human relationships. Other research interests include traditional versus biochemical constructions of purity and pollution; intersections between archaeology, environmental activism, and the medico-environmental humanities; and ecological public health, epigenetics and exposome theory. I co-run a Cambridge-based campaigning group, aligned with Pesticide Action Network UK, that works with local councils and other stakeholders to explore alternatives to synthetic pesticide use in public and private urban spaces. The results of this work feed into my research into the history of urban landscaping, including gardens, and the ways in which grassroots urban wildlife, biodiversity and climate-change activism shapes public attitudes towards urban ‘nature’ and its ‘management’, including synthetic pesticide-use.

Research Projects

PI: Fields, Gardens and Forests: Upland:lowland Interactions and Environmental Worldviews in Ancient India (current).
PI: Urban Natures, Toxicities and Public Attitudes Towards ‘Weeds’, Insects and ‘Pest’ Control in the Wake of Grassroots Biodiversity and Climate Change Activism (current).
PI: Religion and 'Nature' in Ancient India: The Ecological Motif in Buddhist and Brahmanical traditions (British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grant). 2016-2017.
PI: Archaeologies of Well-being: Environmental Ethics and Buddhist Economics in Ancient India (British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship). 2014-15.
Collaborator: One Health, Deep History (PI: Naomi Sykes. Exeter University. Funding: Wellcome Trust). 2017-18.
PI: Landscape, Water and Religion in Ancient India (British Association for South Asian Studies Grant). 2006-8.
PI: Sanchi Survey Project (Funding: British Academy and various). 1998-present.

Publications

Shaw, J. Forthcoming (2023). Religion, Ecology and Environmental Worldviews in Ancient India.
Shaw, J. In Press (2021). “Buddhism and the ‘Natural’ Environment”, In K. Trainor and P. Arai (eds), Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press Handbook Series.
Shaw, J. Forthcoming (2021). “Archaeology and Environmental Activism: Diachronic Perspectives on Socio-Ecological Landscapes of Power, Resistance and Marginality,” Journal of the British Academy: special volume on Environmental History and Climate Change.
Shaw, J. 2019. “Environmentalism as Religio-Medical ‘Worldview: New Synergies Between the Palaeoenvironmental Humanities, Ecological Public Health, and Climate-Change Activism”, Current Swedish Archaeology 26: 61-78.
Shaw, J. 2019. “Breathing Life into Monuments of Death: The Stupa and the ‘Buddha Body’ in Sanchi’s Socio-Ecological Landscape”, In S. Kaul (ed), Eloquent Spaces: Meaning and Community in Early Indian Architecture, 34-68. New Delhi: Routledge.
Sykes, N., and J. Shaw (eds.), 2018. Archaeologies of Medicine and Health Care. Special volume of World Archaeology, 50 (3).
Shaw, J., and N. Sykes, 2018. “New Directions in the Archaeology of Medicine: Deep-Time Approaches to Human-Animal-Environmental Care”, World Archaeology 50(3): 365-383.
Shaw, J. 2018. “Early Indian Buddhism, Water and Rice: Collective Responses to Socio-Ecological Stress: Relevance for Global Environmental Discourse and Anthropocene Studies”, In Z. Zhuang and M. Altaweel (eds), Water Technologies and Societies in the Past and Present, London: UCL Press, 223-55.
Shaw, J. (ed.), 2016. Archaeology and Environmental Ethics. Special volume of World Archaeology, 48 (4).
Shaw, J, 2016. “Religion, ‘Nature’ and Environmental Ethics in Ancient India: Archaeologies of Human:Non-Human Suffering and Well-Being in Early Buddhist and Hindu Contexts”, World Archaeology 48(4): 517-543.
Shaw, J. 2016. “Archaeology, Climate-change and Environmental Ethics: Diachronic Perspectives in Human:Non-Human:Environment Worldviews, Activism and Care”, World Archaeology 48 (4): 449-465.
Sutcliffe, J., J. Shaw, and E. Brown, 2011. “Historical Water Resources in South Asia: he Hydrological Background”, Hydrological Sciences Journal 56 (5), 775-788.
Shaw, J. 2007. Buddhist Landscapes in Central India: Sanchi Hill and Archaeologies of Religious and Social Change, C. 3rd Century BC to 5th Century AD. London: Routledge.

Teaching

All of the courses that I coordinate or contribute towards include sessions on climate /Anthropocene narratives and medico-environmental worldviews and ethics.

ARCL0050 Archaeology of Early South Asia (Coordinator, runs in alternating years, available 2021/22)

ARCL0052 Archaeology of Early-Historic South Asia (Coordinator, runs in alternating years, not running 2021/22)

ARCL0154 Archaeology of Buddhism (Coordinator, not running 2021/22)

ARCL0152 Archaeologies of Asia (Contributor, available in 2021/22)

ARCL0120 Archaeology of the Silk Roads (Contributor, available in 2021/22)