Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin’s Under the Spell of the Batur Vulcano constitutes a detailed historical ethnography of Pura Ulun Danu Batur, one of the most important temple complexes in Bali, Indonesia. Synthesizing two decades of research, it offers a new and authoritative account of religious change and state formation in highland Bali. Sadly, the author did not live long enough to hold the published book in her own hands. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin passed away on 5 June 2025, after a long and rich career in anthropology and museum collections, at the age of 80. She did, however, manage to finish the final manuscript, in collaboration with her husband and life-long companion in travel and research, Joerg Hauser. As the editors, we proudly include her last monograph in the KITLV’s Verhandelingen series, where, we believe, it rightly belongs.
Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin was born in Basel on 7 June 1944. She studied at the universities of Basel and München and carried out extensive ethnographic research among the Iatmul and the Abelam in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. At the Museum der Kulturen in Basel, Switzerland, where she worked as a curator and researcher between 1971 and 1989, she initiated a series of important and innovative collaborative projects and exhibitions in which she opened academic research to public education. In 1992, she attained the chair of anthropology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. She retired from that position in 2009, but she remained active throughout, working among others as a research professor at the same university between 2010 and 2016.
Hauser-Schäublin was long known primarily for her work on Papua New Guinea and Oceania. She published on material culture, designed exhibitions, created documentaries, and authored visual essays. She also was a frequent speaker and adviser in debates about ethnographic objects, provenance, and restitution. Her first project in Bali was a collaborative one, focusing on textile collections. She travelled back to the island several times for other projects. The research on which this book is based, in the Batur area, started in 1995. Her final visit to the island took place in 2023. As Joerg Hauser recollected, this was a valuable and deeply enjoyable trip, during which she was able to clarify lingering questions. She worked extensively on the manuscript in her final years and was satisfied with our decision to publish it. As editors, we hope that this book will not only inspire readers and contribute to academic debates but also stand as testimony to a long and remarkable career.
We would like to thank the editors at Brill, Paola la Battaglia and Chunyan Shu, for their support for the book. We are equally grateful, also on behalf of Brill, to Dick van der Meij for the editorial support he kindly provided during the production stage following the author’s passing.
Rosemarijn Hoefte and David Kloos
September 2025