My mother, Angela Hobart, who has died aged 86, was a social anthropologist who specialised in the study of the sacred art of Balinese shadow puppetry, by which poet-priests tell stories, projecting shadows of puppets at night under the flickering light of a coconut oil lamp.
She first encountered shadow puppetry when living in Bali in the early 1970s, and conducted research into the topic for many years afterwards, resulting in two books on the subject, Dancing Shadows of Bali: Theatre and Myth (1987) and Healing Performances of Bali: Between Darkness and Light (2005).
Angela’s other abiding concern was the plight of refugees, and later in life she worked as a therapist with the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London. There she listened to the stories of her clients, helping them to process trauma and rebuild their shattered lives.
Her interest in helping refugees stemmed partly from her experiences as a child. She was born in Freiburg in Nazi Germany to Edmund Stinnes, a financier from a leading industrial family, and Margiana (nee von Schulze Gaevernitz), a housewife. In 1941, during the second world war, the family fled to the US with the help of various Quaker networks.
After the war Angela and her parents returned to Europe to live in Ascona, Switzerland, where she went to school. She moved on to study art in Florence, Italy, where in 1964 she met a young British anthropologist, Mark Hobart, following him back to the UK. Working there as an occupational therapist at St George’s hospital in London, she moved to Cambridge with Mark in 1965 and they were married that year.
In 1967 Angela accompanied Mark to Singapore, where he was lecturing in anthropology. The following year they returned to London, and she studied Indonesian and Balinese languages in preparation for further visits to the far east. In 1970 Mark’s fieldwork took them to Bali, where Angela soon became fascinated by shadow puppetry and began to conduct research of her own in that sphere, including by talking in depth to some of the best known puppet masters.
By 1979 Angela and Mark were back in London, where, with a suitcase full of ethnographic data, she was fast-tracked on to a PhD programme at the School of Oriental and African Studies (now Soas University of London). That was followed by a master’s in anthropology at the London School of Economics in 1983.
From 1986 onwards, Angela began to give gallery talks and lectures on south-east Asian art and culture at the British Museum, and after gaining a postgraduate diploma in cross-cultural psychotherapy in 1997, the following year she took on work as a lecturer on cross-cultural therapy at Goldsmiths, University of London (1998-2008).
In 1989 she had established a research centre in her family home in Switzerland, the Fondazione Centro Incontri Umani, which aims to build bridges between people from different cultural backgrounds. In 1990 she also founded the Sutasoma Trust to provide grants and fellowships to young scholars working on humanitarian projects.
Building on that foundation, from 2012 to 2016 she worked as a part-time psychodynamic therapist with the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London.
Throughout her life Angela showed great kindness to many people. Behind her intellectual rigour was great personal warmth and a passionate care and concern for others.
Her marriage to Mark ended in divorce in 1982. She is survived by me.
