Dr Margaret Lyngdoh

Margaret Lyngdoh is a folklorist, ethnographer, and a scholar of indigenous religions whose scholarship focuses on vernacular religiosities, oral narratives, and ritual studies, especially that of the Khasi and Karbi communities from Northeast India. Trained as a folklorist and also in the comparative study of religions, she writes also as a Khasi-scholar. She continues to work with the Khasis and Karbis for 25+ years now.

Her scholarship combines ethnographic precision with reflexive interpretive efforts as for her, these worlds are not merely objects of study but subjects to create knowledge with. Her research persistently engages with what dominant institutionalized frameworks have peripheralized, dismissed, or stigmatized, especially the traditions of demonological practices, human–animal transformations, secret rites and rituals, etc.

She is Research Fellow in Indigenous Folklore Studies at the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, Institute of Cultural Research, University of Tartu, where she has held a permanent position since April 2017. She received her PhD in Folkloristics from the University of Tartu in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Ülo Valk. She is also the first Indian scholar to receive a doctorate degree in folkloristics from Estonia.

She has also been a visiting student at the Centre for Folklore Studies, Ohio State University (2012) and the Study of Religions Department, University College Cork (2013). In Autumn 2016 she was awarded the Albert Lord Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Oral Tradition, University of Missouri. From 2018 to 2021 she held the Estonian Research Council postdoctoral fellowship investigating Tradition and Vernacular Discourses in the Context of Local Christianities in Northeastern India in collaboration with the Highland Institute under the supervision of Prof. Arkotong Longkumer.

Margaret's research engages with indigenous belief worlds as lived, embodied, and politically charged realities, treating stigmatized practices as epistemological bases for negotiating kinship, justice, ecology, and historical change:

• •Khasi and Karbi Indigenous vernacular religions
• •Indigenous belief narrative traditions
• •Demonology and demonological practices
• •Stigmatized magical practices
• •Human–animal transformation in Northeast India
• •Mortuary practices, secret funerary rites, and the agency of the dead
• •Indigenous ontologies
• •Methodological pluralism and indigenous religious research methods
• •Vernacular religiosities and oral narratives
• •Ritual studies and the comparative study of religions

Since her Associate Fellowship at The Highland Institute from 2018 to 2021 and her continued affiliation thereafter, Margaret has contributed to the Institute's long-term research on Indigenous communities of the Indian Northeast.

Her postdoctoral project, Tradition and Vernacular Discourses in the Context of Local Christianities in Northeastern India (PUTJD746, Estonian Research Council, 2018–2021, €120,120), examined the vernacular interpretations of Christianity among the Indigenous communities of this region. Her research complements directly with the Institute's wider work on religious change, indigenous knowledge systems, and the politics of belonging.

• 2026 — 'Magic at the Peripheries: Meanings from the Indigenous Context of Northeast India.' Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, forthcoming.
• 2025 — Scheid, Claire S. and Margaret Lyngdoh. 'The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions in India.' In Afe Adogame and Graham Harvey (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Indigenous Religions. Routledge Handbooks in Religion. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003265207-28
• 2025 — 'Khasi Indigenous Religion in Contexts of Vernacular Christianities in Meghalaya.' In Lidia Guzy (ed.), Indian Indigenous Religions — The Himalayas and Beyond. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer GmbH, forthcoming.
• 2025 — Lyngdoh, Margaret and Abhirup Sarkar. 'Singing into Christianity: 1872 and the Naga Indigenous Journey into Conversion.' Indigenous Religious Traditions 3.1: 106–108. https://doi.org/10.1558/irt.33497
• 2024 — Lyngdoh, Margaret and Laur Järv. 'The Abyss in Indigenous Khasi Worldview: The Search for Traditional Models.' In Marko Pajević (ed.), The Abyss as a Concept for Cultural Theory: A Comparative Exploration. Textxet: Studies in Comparative Literature, vol. 106. Leiden: Brill, 183–202. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004691674_010
• 2024 — 'Experiments in the Domestication of Indigenous Religions.' Indigenous Religious Traditions 2.2: 322–324. https://doi.org/10.1558/irt.32613
• 2023 — 'The Rhetorics of Death and Dying: The Khasi and Karbi Context.' In Parjanya Sen and Anup S. Chakraborty (eds.), Death and Dying in Northeast India: Indigeneity and Afterlife. London and New York: Routledge, 42–58. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003406693-4
• 2023 — 'Shapeshifting Traditions among the Khasi of Northeast India: Ecological Engagements and Multispecies Relationships.' Synthesis 15: 100–125.
• 2023 — 'Telling the Transformation: Vernacular "Tradition–Tropes" to Interpret Narratives about Were-Snakes Among the Khasis in Northeast India.' Indigenous Religious Traditions 1.2: 219–250. https://doi.org/10.1558/irt.26309
• 2022 — 'Dealing with the Dead: Vernacular Belief Negotiations Among the Khasis of North Eastern India.' In Marion Bowman and Ülo Valk (eds.), Contesting Authority: Vernacular Knowledge and Alternative Beliefs. UK: Equinox, 339–360. https://doi.org/10.1558/equinox.29223

In 2020 she organized and led the first ever academic international workshop in Diphu, Karbi Anglong, on Indigeneity, Orality, and Liminal Ontologies: Methodological Pluralisms and Approaches to Culture, bringing together scholars and tradition-bearers from Northeast India, Europe, and North America. The proceedings were co-edited with Maria Momzikova and Claire S. Scheid and published in 2020.

Her scholarship and public engagement are extended through invited lectures, keynotes at conferences, and workshops across India, Europe, North America, and Japan. Her writing has also reached a wider audience through pieces in The Shillong Times, The Meghalayan, and the University of Tartu blog, where she has addressed indigenous ecology, matrilineal society, sustainability, and the politics of religious belonging in contemporary Northeast India.

At the University of Tartu, she teaches in the MA programme in folkloristics. She also supervises students in the departments of religious studies, especially who focus on Indigenous studies.

Her long-term fieldwork relationships in the Khasi Hills and Karbi Anglong have resulted into several published works and supported community-based documentation initiatives. She co-supervised the doctoral thesis of Dr Kareng Ronghangpi titled, 'Myth, Memory, and Belief: A Study on Karbi Oral Narratives,' at Royal Global University, Guwahati in 2025, a project directly anchored in the Institute's commitment to scholarship led by researchers from the communities under study.