Elisa Ganser is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the URPP “Asia and Europe” at the University of Zurich, with a research project called “The Place of the Performing Arts in Indian Religions: Abhinavagupta’s ‘Soteriology of Art’ and Its Contexts. In her PhD thesis she dealt with the relation between the theory and practice of dance as presented in authoritative discourse through a study of the fourth chapter of Nāṭyaśāstra and its commentary by Abhinavagupta. She has also explored and published on other aspects of the performing arts, such as staging techniques, differences in the aesthetics of drama, dance and painting ,the social status of actors in different sources and the overlapping of religious and aesthetic concepts in the Abhinavabhāratī.