Jesper Østergaard (post-doc, section for Religious Studies)

Jesper Østergaard holds a MA in the Study of Religion and Semiotics. Current project focuses on the relationship(s) between landscape and cognition in Tibetan pilgrimage. It connects theories from cognitive science, i.e. externalism, with a focus on the concrete landscape, i.e. the topographic turn, to analyse how the landscape is integrated as cognitive scaffolding in the pilgrim’s cognitive process.

During his studies he worked with different topics such as cultural models, internalisation, religious narratives, branding, tourism, conceptual integration with material anchor, cognitive theories on ritual, pilgrimage, Tibetan religion and theories on space, place and landscape.

His research fields include cognitive science of religion, externalism, anthropology of religion, Tibetan religion, pilgrimage in different traditions, techniques of the body and the spatial and topographic turn in the humanities.