Christopher John Fuller is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1976, Fuller started conducting field research in the great temple of Madurai in Tamilnadu, southeast India, which is dedicated to the Hindu goddess Minakshi and her husband Sundareshwara (Shiva). Fuller has also researched and written extensively on popular Hinduism and Hindu nationalism, the caste system, the Tamil Brahmans, the history of Indian anthropology, and other topics.