Dr. Jeffery D. Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, specializes in the religions and philosophies of India. He is the author of several books, including Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds and Jainism: An Introduction, and numerous articles. He is also the editor of the series Explorations in Indic Traditions for Lexington Books. In 2018, he received the Hindu American Foundation’s Dharma Seva Award for his ongoing efforts to promote more accurate and culturally sensitive portrayals of Indic traditions in the American educational system and popular media. He has spoken in numerous venues, both national and international, including Princeton University, Yale University, the University of Chicago, and Jawaharlal Nehru University (in India), and has given three talks at the United Nations.
Professor Rita D. Sherma, PhD, is Director of the Mira and Ajay Shingal Center for Dharma Studies, Chair of Hindu Studies, and Associate Professor of Dharma Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. She is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Dharma Studies. Dr. Sherma is the editor of a number of volumes on themes in Hindu Studies and Dharma Studies, and author of numerous academic articles in multi-author anthologies. She is the Vice President of the Dharma Academy of North America (DANAM), a scholarly association and forum for academic research on Dharma Studies. Her forthcoming publications include Hinduism and the Divine: An Introduction to Hindu Theology, and Ecology, Ethics, and Enlightenment: A Hindu Ecotheologyfont-family.
Professor Pankaj Jain is an internationally recognized academic leader in Sustainability, Jain Studies, Film Studies, and Diaspora Studies. He is the Head of the Department of Humanities & Languages and the Chair of The India Centre at FLAME University. Earlier, he was the founding co-chair of India Initiatives Groupand Associate Professor in the Departments of Philosophy & Religion and Anthropology at the University of North Texas, a tier-1 American university. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and an M.A. from Columbia University (both in Religious Studies). His B.E. was in Computer Science from Karnatak University. Prof. Jain has over twenty-five years of work experience in academia and industry.He is currently working on his fourth monograph,
Modern Jainism: A Historical Approach, co-editing the
Encyclopedia of Hinduism and a volume on
Indian and Western Philosophical Concepts in Religion. He recently published his third monograph,
Dharma in America: A Short History of Hindu-Jain Diaspora. His earlier monographs are award-winning
Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities: Sustenance and Sustainability and
Science and Socio-Religious Revolution in India: Moving the Mountains.
His articles have appeared in several academic journals and on the Huffington Post, Washington Post, Economic Times, Times of India, Speaking Tree, and Patheos. In addition, Dr. Jain is widely quoted in various American and Indian media outlets, including NBC, CBS, and BBC. In July 2020, the New York Times interviewed him, and in 2019 Morgan Freeman interviewed him in his National Geographic series The Story of God. He is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship for Environmental Leadership and Wenner-Gren Grant, among many other grants. In addition, he was nominated for the Sustainability Leadership Award from Memnosyne Institute.
Professor Madhu Khanna, Professor of Indic Religion, is a well-known scholar. At present she is Tagore National Fellow at the National Museum, New Delhi, where she is researching and preparing a definitive catalogue on the celebrated Tantra Art Collection. Until recently, she was the Director of the Centre for the Study of ComparativeReligions and Civilizations, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, where she now teaches courses in Hinduism, and cross-cultural studies in the areas of Religion & Gender and Religion & Ecology. She has been Bina and Haridas Choudhury distinguished Fellow (2013-14) in Asian and Comparative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. She earned her PhD from Oxford University in Hindu Sakta Tantra. She has authored / edited seven books which include:The Sricakra: History, Ritual and Symbol of Goddess Tripurasundari (forthcoming); Saktapramoda? of Deva Nandan Singh (editor); Religions After September 11, Proceedings of an International Seminar (co-editor); The Subtle Body – An Illuminated Tantric Scroll; t-size: 14px;">?ta – The Cosmic Order, Proceedings of an International Seminar (editor); Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity, London 1989, The Tantric Way – Art, Science & Ritual (co-author) of whi
