Florence Pasche Guignard

The comparative study of religions is my home discipline, from which I regularly venture into the surrounding landscape of the humanities and social sciences (and, sometimes, even beyond). I research and teach on topics at the intersection of religions and spiritualities with the history of women, gender, embodiment, ritual, media and material culture, in historical and contemporary contexts, and often with a comparative dimension. My interdisciplinary work has focused on traditional and emerging ritualizations of pregnancy, and childbirth, as well as on the spiritual dimensions of fertility awareness and its digitalization. My most recent works focus on motherhood and mothering in religious contexts. My areas of specialization also include religious traditions of South Asia, and especially Hinduism, and particularly, the devotional poetry of Northern India (bhakti). I have co-edited a volume on motherhood and polytheism, and two others on the socio-cultural aspects of food and motherhood. Theory and methodology, -in particular, the question of comparison in religious studies- are also part of my explorations in this discipline, in dialogue with others. I am presently a professor in religious studies at the Université Laval in Québec City. After completing my doctoral degree in the study of religions at the Université de Lausanne (UNIL, Switzerland, 2012), I have joined the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto (Canada) as a postdoctoral researcher for a study entitled "Natural Parenting in the Digital Age: At the Confluence of Mothering, Religion, Environmentalism, and Technology." I have worked as a course instructor at the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga and at the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto. I have also worked at the Faculté des Lettres (Study of Societies, Cultures and Religions) at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland). Previously, I have also worked at the University of Lausanne, at the Collège des Humanités at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), at the Chair of comparative history of religions and interreligious dialogue at the Université de Fribourg, and at the Department of Philosophy at Ryerson University in downtown Toronto.