Axel Michaels

Axel Michaels (born 26 May 1949) is a Professor of Classical Indology and Religious Studies at Heidelberg University, former Co-Director of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context"[1] (2014-2019) and since 2014 the Director of the research project Documents on the History of Religion and Law of Pre-modern Nepal.

After he completed his dissertation in 1978 summa cum laude, Michaels worked as a research assistant at the Museum of Ethnology in Hamburg and at the University of Münster.

He then worked as an assistant professor at the Department of Indology at the University of Kiel (1980 until 1992), meanwhile also holding the position as the Director of the Nepal Research Center (Kathmandu) from 1981 to 1983.

[11] Connected to the project was the shooting and production of the films Handling Death (2005) and Belfruit and loincloth (2007), realized in collaboration with Niels Gutschow and Christian Bau.

Later, he also worked on a project aiming at the translation and publication of the so called “Wright-chronicle”, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, 2011 to 2012).