Beyond Insider/Outsider: Theorizing Practitioners, Scholars, and Critical Methodologies

This roundtable panel robustly problematizes and theorizes methodological approaches used by those known as practitioner-scholars or scholar-practitioners in the field of Tantric Studies. Grappling with and centering practitioner-informed perspectives and methodologies, we examine, identify, confront, and navigate the unique challenges and advantages of this perspective, which can benefit both practitioner-scholars and non-practitioner-scholars. Given the recent turn toward more intersubjective and participatory forms of research, rigorous and theoretically engaged explorations of the scholar as practitioner in Tantric traditions are timely and vital, and can benefit researchers across disciplines in Religious Studies. Exploring traditional and virtual field research, digital Tantra, and medieval textual scholarship, this panel interrogates various collaborative, decolonial, and innovative strategies for practitioner-scholars working in a variety of contexts: in the field with both folk and temple-based traditions, online, with texts, and within the academy itself.