Bhakti Mamtora is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona. In the classroom, she focuses on lived religion in South Asia and specializes in interactive storytelling. Her current book project employs archival, textual, and ethnographic methods to examine the genesis and reception of the Swāmīnī Vāto in the Swaminarayan Sampraday during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More broadly, her research interests include community formation, media, and transnational religion. She has published articles in Fieldwork in Religion, Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, and The Journal of Vaishnava Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Religion from the University of Florida, an M.A. in South Asia Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Communications and Media Studies and International Political Economy from Fordham University. She currently serves as the co-chair of the South Asian Religions Unit of the American Academy of Religion and the Vice-President of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies.

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