Christopher Jain Miller
Christopher Jain Miller, the co-founder and Vice President of Academic Affairs at Arihanta Institute, completed his PhD in the Study of Religion at the University of California, Davis. He is Professor of Jain and Yoga Studies at Arihanta Institute, Visiting Researcher at the University of Zürich's Asien-Orient-Institut, and Visiting Professor at Claremont School of Theology. Christopher's primary fields of research interest are Yoga Studies and Engaged Jain Studies, and he currently serves as the co-chair of the Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit at the American Academy of Religion as well as on the steering committees for the Dharma Academy of North America (DANAM) and the Yoga Darśana Yoga Sādhana conference. Christopher is the author of Embodying Transnational Yoga: Eating, Singing, and Breathing in Transformation (Routledge 2024) and the co-editor of Engaged Jainism: Critical and Constructive Studies of Jain Social Engagement (SUNY 2025) as well as Beacons of Dharma: Spiritual Exemplars for the Modern Age (Lexington 2020).
Anja Nikodem
Anja holds an MA in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation from SOAS, University of London, and studied Social Anthropology, Latin American Studies and Mesoamericanistic at the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on the reception of yoga, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. She is currently applying for a PhD with an interdisciplinary focus, aiming to analyze the connection between the early reception of Haṭhayoga and Western science, utilizing sources from Europe, North America, and India.
 
Anja has been a key organizer of the Yoga Darsana Yoga Sadhana conference in Hamburg in 2024 and serves as a member of the steering committee for yoga research. In addition to her academic work, Anja is a yoga teacher and has professional experience in different fields, including as a tour guide in an anthropological museum, project manager, and coordinator for accommodations for refugees.
 
Firdose Moonda
Firdose Moonda is a yoga scholar, teacher and sports journalist of Indian heritage, based in Cape Town, South Africa. She holds a Masters degree in the Traditions of Yoga and Meditation, completed in 2019, and has begun doctortal work provisionally titled Yoga, Politics and Possibilities for Social Justice. 
Firdose has presented papers at two Yoga Darsana, Yoga Sadhana conferences. In 2022, Firdose presented early research on the history of yoga in South Africa and in 2023, she took an ethnographic look at finding the brown female body in contemporary yoga. These subjects form the core of Firdose's work, as she aims to combine body politics, feminism and decolonial studies to understand if and how yoga traveled with the Indian diaspora into Africa and what role it plays in the lives of women of Indian heritage today.
Jacqueline Hargreaves
Jacqueline Hargreaves, BE (Hons), E-RYT, is the Project Manager of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies and Programme Convenor of Yoga Studies Online at SOAS, University of London. In 2022, Jacqueline pioneered international partnerships between SOAS and several leading Chinese yoga institutions, resulting in the development of the innovative Yoga and Meditation Education Certificate, an online programme offered in Chinese.
 
Jacqueline's research focuses on the intersection of historical yoga and its contemporary applications, particularly in therapeutic settings. She is committed to advancing the field by collaborating with fellow researchers to present findings in innovative and accessible ways. Notable contributions include her work on the AyurYog Project (Vienna University, 2016–2020), where she constructed a web-based visual and textual timeline of premodern Ayurveda and Yoga; and her curation of "Embodied Liberation" exhibition for the Haṭha Yoga Project at SOAS University of London. This exhibition, held at the Brunei Gallery, featured the documentary film she produced that brought to life the eighteenth-century yoga practices of the Haṭhābhyāsapaddhati through embodied philology.
 
Jacqueline Hargreaves holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) from the University of New South Wales. She is a founding member and online editor of the Journal of Yoga Studies, a peer-reviewed, open-access academic publication, and The Luminescent, an independent, evidence-based research hub dedicated to the history and practice of Yoga and Meditation.
 
Peter Pasedach

Peter Pasedach is a research associate at the department for Indology and Tibetology of Hamburg University. He is a Sanskritist specialising in court poetry, and yoga-related texts.  He has taught Sanskrit and related topics in Hamburg, Göttingen and Leiden. He is actively involved in the building up of the focus Yoga Studies at Hamburg University, has been one of the main organisers of the 3rd Yoga Darśana, Yoga Sādhana conference, and is one of the founders of the Yoga Studies Research Network.

Peter Pasedach completed his PhD in 2018 with a dissertation on the sixth canto of the Haravijaya, the major part of which is a philosophical ode to Śiva, sung to him by personified Spring, praising him as the real nature of the highest reality of a wide diversity of philosophical and theological systems of the time. He critically edited this canto, together with its available commentaries, basing himself on manuscript material dating back up to the 12th century which he collected on a number of research trips to India. Currently the primary focus of his work is on the Kapphiṇābhyudaya, a mahākāvya based on a Buddhist plot, but with śaivaite elements. Having recently got access to copies kept in Beijing of the single known manuscript of any commentary on it, which has survived in Tibet, he has received funding from the DFG for work on these two epic poems.

In Yoga, he is working on a new digital critical edition of the  Śivasaṃhitā , and preparing a project on Vācaspatimiśra’s Tattvavaiśāradī on the Pātañjalayogaśāstra. In his Sanskrit literature courses he regularly reads yoga-related texts.

Theodora Wildcroft

Theo Wildcroft, PhD is a yoga teacher-trainer, writer and scholar who is interested in the democratization of yoga post-lineage, somatic literacy, meaning-making and the counter-culture. She is an Associate Lecturer at the Open University, UK, Visiting Lecturer in Dharmic Worldviews at the University of Chester, Fellow of the HEA, former Coordinator of the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, editor of the BASR Bulletin, an honorary member of the British Wheel of Yoga, member of the IAYT, and a continuing professional development trainer and consultant for Yoga Alliance (E-RYT® 500, YACEP®). She is the author of Post-lineage yoga: from guru to #metoo, and co-editor of The Yoga Teachers’ Survival Guide and Yoga Studies in Five Minutes.