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.

I hold a bachelor's degree in the Study of Religion and Classics from Aarhus University, Denmark, and a master's in the Study of Religion from the same university. In addition, I have been a guest student in Indo-European studies at Copenhagen University, Denmark.

I am a part of the Uppsala Network for Indo-European Cultures, Languages and Tradition (UNI-CULT), Uppsala University, and associated with the Centre for Indo-European Language and Culture, Stockholm University, and the LAMP-Project.

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.