Dr Bal Gopal Shrestha aims at producing a number of articles including a book manuscript on the varieties of religiosity among the Nepalese diaspora during his fellowship period at the IIAS. As a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK, he carried out a research among the Nepalese diaspora communities in the UK and Belgium focusing on their religious practices (2009–).
Having conducted fieldwork in Nepal, India, the UK and Belgium, Dr. Shrestha has published widely on Nepalese religious rituals, Hinduism, Buddhism, ethnic nationalism, the Maoist movement, political developments in Nepal and on the Nepalese diaspora. He is the author of the monographs – The Newars of Sikkim: Reinventing Language, Culture and Identity in the Diaspora (Vajra Books 2015) and The Sacred Town of Sankhu: The Anthropology of Newar Ritual, Religion and Society in Nepal(Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2012, paperback 2013). Together with the late Van den Hoek and Dirk J. Nijland he made the award-winning ethnographic documentary Sacrifice of Serpents: The Festival of Indrayani, Kathmandu 1992/94 (Leiden, 1997). He is an editor of the book Caturmasa: Celebrations of Death in Kathmandu, Nepal by A.W. van den Hoek (posthumously first edition Leiden 2004, slightly revised and updated edition Kathmandu 2014),
Dr Shrestha earned a PhD in anthropology at Leiden University (the Netherlands). Formally, he was with the IIAS as a Jan Gonda Fellow (2001-02). The University of Cambridge, UK, awarded him a Frederick Williamson Memorial Fund (2003), and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona, Switzerland (2004-06). He has been researcher and an Assistant Professor at Leiden University, and taught Politics of South and Southeast Asia (2006-08).