Julia Cassaniti
Associate Professor of Psychological and Medical Anthropology, Washington State University Visiting Associate Professor – Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University
Biographical Info
Julia Cassaniti studies the psychology of mental health and religious culture in and across transnational Southeast Asia, with an ethnographic focus on Theravada Buddhist practice in Thailand. She is especially interested in processes of mental categorization, and the ways that people construct reality through shared categorical engagements, along with the implications these have for health and well-being. Her projects include a long-term study of change through the Pali concept of impermanence in Northern Thailand; a comparative ethnography of mindfulness’ global circulations across Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar; and an analysis of ghosts, affect, and the supernatural agency of interpersonal energies in Southeast Asia. New research will examine the cross-cultural psychology of cognitive heuristics involving attention and perception, along with continued work on social patterns and reality-construction. Dr. Cassaniti is the author of Living Buddhism: Mind, Self and Emotion in a Thai Community (Cornell U. Press, 2015); Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia (Cornell U. Press, 2018); and Universalism Without Uniformity: Explorations in Mind and Culture (U. Chicago Press, 2017).
Remembering the Present: Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia (2018) and Living Buddhism: Mind, Self and Emotion in a Thai Community (2015) are available at here. Universalism Without Uniformity: Explorations in Mind and Culture (2017) can be found here.
A recent podcast on Remembering the Present is now available here.