Kristina Myrvold

Kristina Myrvold is an Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religions, specializing in Indian religions and cultures. In her research she has focused on Sikh traditions, with particular attention to religious ideas, ritual practice, and historiography, as well as Indian colonial history and migration. She has conducted extensive fieldwork and archival research in India and Sweden. 

Myrvold's PhD dissertation in History of Religions, Inside the Guru's Gate: Ritual Uses of Texts among the SIkhs in Varanasi (Lund University, 2007), examined how local Sikhs in Varanasi perceive, use, and interact with the Sikh scripture, Guru Granth Sahib, through a broad range of rituals and religious practices. 

After completing her PhD, Myrvold worked on a research project on the production and use of Sikh katha - oral and written expositions of Sikh teachings, collective history, and the Guru Granth Sahib - in Punjab and in a Swedish diaspora. The project was funded by the Swedish Research Council (2009-2012). Between 2009 and 2013, she served as a principal investigator and researcher for the Nordcorp project Sikh Identity Formations: Generational Transfer of Traditions in the Nordic Countries, carried out in collaboration with Nordic researchers and funded by the joint Board for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS). 

In 2012-2013, she also served as Director of the Nordic Centre in India (NCI), a consortium of Nordic universities that aims to establish collaboration in research and higher education between the Nordic countries and India. 

Between 2015 and 2019, she worked on the project Religion in the Trenches, which investigated the production, distribution, and use of miniature scriptures and other religious artefacts for Indian soldiers who fought for the British Army during the First World War. The project was based on extensive archival research and funded by the Swedish Research Council. 

During 2020-2025, Myrvold was a Visiting Professor in History of Religions at Lund University. She is the principal investigator of the project Iconic Scriptures in Colonial Punjab (The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation), which examines how Sikh scriptures were produced, negotiated, and transformed through print technologies, as well as the collaborative project Religion in Times of Crises (the Swedish Research Council), which explores how different religious groups in Sweden understand and respond to crises. 

Myrvold in the author of a large number of publications on Sikh traditions and Indian migration and colonial history. Her most recent book is Sikh News in India, 1864-1924, a four-volume open access publication (Brill, 2024). She is one of the editors of Brill's Encyclopedia of Sikhism (2017-2025).