Authors & Contributors

  • Loriliai Biernacki is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and is the author of Renowned Goddess of Desire (2007) and The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta’s Panentheism and New Materialism (2023). She is also co-chair of the Contemplative Studies unit at the American Academy of Religion.

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Gunter Bombaerts is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Eindhoven University of Technology.

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  • Josh Brahinsky is a psychological anthropologist researcher in the Department of Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill and Religious Studies at Stanford. His comparative neurophenomenology of contemplative practices like prayer and speaking in tongues, jhana meditation and breathwork explores the emotional, cognitive and bodily forms of surrender they involve, the communities that shape them, and the behaviors they inspire. His multimodal methodology integrates ethnographic, phenomenological, psychological, autonomic and neurobiological measures.

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Erik Braun is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and author of The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw (2014).

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Alan Brill is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Setan Hall University.

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  • Willoughby B. Britton is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Brown University.

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  • Julia Cassaniti is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and author of Living Buddhism: Mind, Self, and Emotion in a Thai Community (2015).

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Thomas Cattoi is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University.

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  • Yuria Celidwen, PhD, is an Indigenous scholar of Nahua and Maya lineages from the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Her research centers on Indigenous forms of contemplation and the transcendent experience embodied in prosocial behavior. Celidwen is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology of the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Othering & Belonging Institute. She is the author of Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being (2024). 

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Michael Chase is Senior Researcher at the Centre Jean Pépin of the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris-Villejuif, France and adjunct professor of Greek and Roman studies at the University of Victoria. He is the author and translator of Ammonius: Interpretation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Five Terms (2020).

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  • Potprecha Cholvijarn is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Chulalongkorn University.

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  • Douglas Christie is a Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University and author of The Blue Saphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology and The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Love, Contemplative Practice, and the Common Life.

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  • David J. Cooper is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Brown University.

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  • John Crockett is a musician, naturalist, natural soundscape recordist, and founder of The Natural Contemplative in southern Vermont.  He has been active in environmental education and conservation for 30 years, working with the Whale Conservation Institute/Ocean Alliance, Student Conservation Association, Massachusetts Audubon Society, and the Environmental Studies Department at Antioch University New England.

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Jazlee Crowley is a PhD student in Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. Her ethnobiological research revolves around genetics, botany and art. Her current project focuses on the sacred Bodhi tree, Ficus religiosa.

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Stephan Dawson is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Lynchburg.

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  • Dee Denver is a Professor of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. He is the author of The Dharma in DNA: Insights at the Intersection of Biology and Buddhism (2022).

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  • Marc-Henri Deroche is Associate Professor at Kyoto University, Japan, where he teaches Buddhist and Tibetan Studies and researches mindfulness in Buddhist philosophy, theories, and manuals of meditation. He is the author of A Tibetan Quest for Wisdom: Prajñāraśmi (1518–1584) and the Sources of the Impartial (ris med) Approach (2023), and issue editor for “Study, Reflection, and Cultivation: Integrative Paths to Wisdom from Buddhist and Comparative Perspectives” (Religions 2022) and “Tibetan Studies in Japan: Approaching the High Plateau from the Archipelago” (Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 2024).

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  • Federico Divino is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Antwerp.

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  • John Dunne holds the Distinguished Chair of Contemplative Humanities in the Center for Healthy Minds and the department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the co-author of The Mind (2020) and co-editor of Ecology, Ethics, and Interdependence: The Dalai Lama in Conversation with Leading Thinkers on Climate Change (2018).

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Muhammad Faruque is the Inayat Malik Assistant Professor and a Taft Center Fellow at the University of Cincinnati and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. He is the author of Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing (2021).

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  • Amir Freimann is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Haifa.

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  • Frances Garrett is an Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies and Tibetan Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion and Director of the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health program at the University of Toronto.

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  • James Gentry is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, with particular focus on the literature and history of its Tantric traditions. He is the author of Power Objects in Tibetan Buddhism: The Life, Writings, and Legacy of Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (Brill, 2017), which examines the roles of Tantric material and sensory objects in the lives and institutions of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhists. He is also the author of The Bodhisattva’s Body in a Pill (forthcoming from University of Virginia Press). 

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  • Samuel Grimes is the Shinjo Ito Postdoctoral Fellow in Buddhist Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of the article, “Portrait of a Poison: Datura in Buddhist Magic,” in the Journal of Contemplative Studies: Special Issue on Psychedelics, Contemplation, and Religion.

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  • Kevin Hart is the Jo Rae Wright University Professor in the Divinity School at Duke University. He is the author of Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation (2023) and Wild Track: New and Selected Poems (2015).

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  • Tobin Hart is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of West Georgia.

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  • Peter D. Hershock is an intercultural philosopher and Director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, most recently: Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future and Consciousness Mattering: A Buddhist Synthesis.

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  • Daniel A. Hirshberg is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Colorado-Boulder.

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  • Nicholas Hobhouse is a researcher based at the University of Hong Kong, where he completed his PhD in 2024. His work focuses on Tibetan Buddhist scholastic traditions and their contemporary adaptations.

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  • Dana K. Howe is a Faculty Research Assistant of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. She is interested in using genetics to study evolution, symbiosis, conservation, and biocontrol.

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Yuki Imoto is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Keio University.

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  • Willis Jenkins is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Virginia.

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  • Eleanor Johnson is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University. She is the author of Waste and the Wasters: Poetry and Ecosystemic Thought in Medieval England (2023).

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  • Aostre Johnson is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Saint Michael’s College.

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  • Sonam Kachru is Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department at Yale University, specializing in the history of premodern South Asian philosophy and literature, with an emphasis on Buddhist philosophy. He is the author of Other Lives: Mind and World in Indian Buddhism (2021).

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  • Anne C. Klein is a Professor in the Department of Religion at Rice University, co-founder of the Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism, and author of Being Human and a Buddha Too (2023).

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  • Yaroslav Komarovski is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Nebraska – Lincoln.

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  • Simone Kotva is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Cambridge University.

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  • Georgette M. Ledgister is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Harvard Divinity School.

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  • Dr. Nadine Levy is the head of health and social wellbeing at Nan Tien Institute (a Buddhist higher education institute in Australia) and teaches and researches in the areas of mindfulness, compassion, and social emotions. Her doctoral research examined the therapeutic effects of spiritual community and considered the intersection of mindfulness and psychotherapeutic discourse. Dr. Levy holds a PhD in sociology and Honours degrees in both law and gender studies. She is a Buddhist insight meditation teacher, having completed training with James Baraz (Spirit Rock Meditation Center) and at the Insight Meditation Institute in Sydney.

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  • Michael Lifshitz is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal. He co-directs the Psychedelics and Contemplation Lab, an interdisciplinary research space that combines phenomenology, neuroscience and ethnography to shed light on the plasticity of consciousness. His research focuses on practices that aim to transform subjective experience—from meditation and hypnosis to placebos, prayer, and psychedelics.

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  • Jared R. Lindahl is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Brown University.

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  • Tanya Luhrmann is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University, sometimes with a courtesy appointment in Psychology. She is the author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (2012) and How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others (2020).

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Jonas Mago is a PhD candidate in Neuroscience at McGill University, supervised by Dr. Michael Lifshitz. His research combines neuroimaging and computational modeling to study contemplative practices, including deep meditation (jhāna) and Christian prayer. His work is supported by the German Excellence Scholarship, Mind & Life Institute, Mind & Life Europe, and the Usona Institute.

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  • Ariel Evan Mayse is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University, the senior scholar-in-residence at the Institute of Jewish Spirituality and Society, and an ordained rabbi. He is the author of Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (2024), Speaking Infinities: God and Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritsh (2020), and Guest Editor for JCS Special Issue #03: Contemplative Ecology.

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  • Ofra Mayseless is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Haifa.

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  • David McMahan is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College and author of Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds (2023) and The Making of Buddhist Modernism (2008).

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Francisco Figueroa Medina is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Kyoto University.

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  • Mark Miller is a philosopher of cognition. His research explores what recent advances in neuroscience can tell us about happiness and well-being, and what it means to live well in our increasingly technologically-mediated world. Mark is currently a researcher at Monash University’s Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies and is cross-affiliated with both the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto and the Centre for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience at Hokkaido University.

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  • Judson Murray is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Capital University.

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  • Suzanne Newcombe is a Journal of Contemplative Studies contributor.

  • Oludamini Ogunnaike is an Associate Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions (2020) and Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: West African Madīḥ Poetry and its Precedents (2020).

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  • Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo is the president and founder of NeuroLandscape and editor in chief of the Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health. She is the author of Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces: Contemplative Landscapes (2023).

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Angela Orebaugh is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Virginia.

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  • Michael Overstreet is a Graduate Research Assistant with the Journal of Contemplative Studies and a PhD candidate in the University of Virginia’s Department of French, pursuing research on how agricultural practices help shape the ways we relate to the earth. His recent publications include pieces on poetry in translation, human composting, and France’s farmer protests in the LA Review of Books, Interconnections: Journal of Posthumanism, and TIME Magazine, respectively.

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  • Brendan Ozawa-de Silva is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Emory University.

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  • Roman Palitsky is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Emory University.

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  • Stephanie Paulsell is the Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies at Harvard Divinity School. She is the author of Religion Around Virginia Woolf (2019) and co-editor of Goodness and the Literary Imagination (2019).

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  • Richard Payne is Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Buddhist Studies. He specializes in the study of Japanese tantric Buddhist ritual, specifically the homa, as well as the economics and modern secularization of Buddhism. He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Tantric Studies (2024), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2024), Buddhism Under Capitalism (2022), and Homa Variations (2015), and author of Secularizing Buddhism (2021).

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  • Claire Petitmengin is Professor Emerita at the Institut Mines-Télécom and member of the Archives Husserl (Ecole Normale Supérieure) in Paris. Her research focuses on lived experience and micro-phenomenological methods enabling us to become aware of experience and describe it.

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  • Jordan Quaglia is Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of the Cognitive and Affective Science Laboratory, and Research Director of the Center for the Advancement of Contemplative Education at Naropa University.

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  • Michael L. Raposa is a Professor of Religion Studies and the E. W. Fairchild Professor of American Studies at Lehigh University. He is the author of four books: Peirce’s Philosophy of Religion (1989), Boredom and the Religious Imagination (1999), Meditation and the Martial Arts (2003), and most recently, Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning (2020), as well as numerous articles focused on the thought of Charles S. Peirce and the relevance of pragmatism for contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. Raposa has served as president of the Charles S. Peirce Society, the Semiotic Society of America, and the Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought.

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  • Robert W. Roeser is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Emory University.

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  • Brenna Prevelige is a PhD student of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University. She works at intersections of Mycology and Buddhism, focusing on the medicinal Ganoderma mushroom in the US and Nepal.

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  • Harold D. Roth is Professor of Religious Studies and the Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University. He designed the first university concentration program in Contemplative Studies and is the author of The Contemplative Foundations of Classical Daoism (2021). He is also on the executive committee of the International Society for Contemplative Research.

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  • Pierce Salguero is professor of Asian History & Health Humanities at the Abington College of Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of A Global History of Buddhism & Medicine (2022), co-editor of Buddhism and Healing in the Modern World (2024), and host of the podcast Black Beryl.

    CONTEMPLATIVE CURRENTS

  • Stuart Ray Sarbacker Headshot

    Stuart Ray Sarbacker is professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Philosophy in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion at Oregon State University. He is the author of Tracing the Path of Yoga: The History and Philosophy of Indian Mind-Body Discipline (2021).

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  • Donata Schoeller is the co-founder and academic director of the European Erasmus training program Embodied Critical Thinking and Understanding (TECTU), and the principal investigator and conceptual director of the international research project “Freedom to make sense: embodied, experiential and mindful research.” She is the author of Close Talking and co-editor of Embodied Thinking in Research and Learning, Saying What We Mean, and Thinking Thinking.

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  • Kimberly Schonert-Reichl is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Illinois, Chicago.

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  • Michael Sheehy is Research Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Contemplative Sciences Center at University of Virginia where he is Principal at CIRCL Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Contemplative Studies.

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  • Ian H. Solomon is dean and professor of practice at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He served in the US Senate as legislative counsel to then-Senator Barack Obama. Later, under the Obama administration, he was confirmed unanimously by Congress as the US executive director for the World Bank Group, where he championed private-sector development in Africa and negotiated a range of multi-stakeholder agreements. 

     

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  • Bin Song is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Washington College, specializing in Confucianism, early modern philosophy, and comparative theology, with a focus on metaphysics, ethics, and spirituality. He is the author of Debating Transcendence: Creatio ex nihilo and Sheng Sheng (2025), translator of Ru Meditation: Gao Panlong (2018), and Guest Editor for JCS Special Issue #06: Confucian Contemplation.

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  • Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Stanford University.

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  • Christian Suhr is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Aarhus University.

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  • Dominic D.Z. Sur is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Utah State University.

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  • Sigridur Thorgeirsdottir is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with University of Iceland.

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  • Davey K. Tomlinson is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Villanova University.

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  • Martijn van Beek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University in Denmark. He specializes in ethnographic and phenomenological perspectives on meditation.

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  • Greg Walkerden is a Journal of Contemplative Studies author affiliated with Macquarie University, Australia.

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  • Iya Funlayo E. Wood is a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Founding Director of the African and Diasporic Religious Studies Association, and Guest Editor for Special Issue #05: Contemplation in Africana Traditions in the Journal of Contemplative Studies.

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  • Ame Wren is a Doctoral Candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia and Graduate Research Assistant at the Contemplative Sciences Center. She studies 20th century American Religion, the spiritual-but-not-religious community and the intersections of Eastern philosophy and popular culture among spiritual seekers. She is also the founder and director of the Boston Yoga School.

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  • Ashok Zaman is a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia in Perth, where he lives with his wife and son. His project seeks to overcome the modern malaise of a disconnected scientific worldview by exploring how we can reshape scientific epistemology, grounding it in the experiential intricacy that exceeds all logical limits. With nearly thirty years of meditation practice, including extended retreat phases, he brings a deep contemplative perspective to his philosophical inquiry. 

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  • Fadel Zeidan is a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Center of Pain Medicine and is Director of the Pain Health and Mindfulness Laboratory.  He is also the inaugural Endowed Professor of UC San Diego’s Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion. He is Co-Founder and Director of Neuroscience at the UC San Diego Center for Psychedelic Research. Fadel’s research is focused on identifying the neurobiological mechanisms supporting the modulation and cultivation of empathy and compassion.

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  • Patricia M. Zimmerman is Associate Professor of Practice in Religion at St. Olaf College. Her research and teaching focus on the history of Christianity with particular emphasis on the diversities of Christian thought and practice; feminist theology; theology of food; and comparative mysticism.

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  • Devin Zuckerman is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Her work focuses on Tibetan and Himalayan religions, Buddhist material philosophy, and the environmental humanities.

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