Pankaj Jain


Pankaj Jain is a professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies, Film Studies, Sustainability, and Diaspora Studies. He is the Director of and the Head of the at . He has authored or edited eight books including the Hinduism Section of the Encyclopedia of Indian Religions and another volume on Philosophy of Religion. His articles have appeared in multiple academic journals and popular websites.

Education and career

Jain graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from Karnataka University in 1992 and began teaching at the M.B.M. Engineering College, Jodhpur. He moved to the US in 1996. After working as an IT professional for a few years, he joined Columbia University in 2002 to pursue M.A. in Indian Religions. In 2008, he received a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in Indian Religions and Ecology.
In 2007, he taught Sanskrit, Hindi, and Hinduism at Rutgers University for a year. From 2008 to 2010, he taught at North Carolina State University. In 2010 he joined the Department of Philosophy and Religion and Department of Anthropology at the University of North Texas. He has been a research affiliate at the Pluralism Project by Harvard University, the first Hindu-Jain scholar-in-residence at GreenFaith, an American interfaith environmental coalition, and the India representative for the International Society for Environmental Ethics.
He convened the first Indic Studies conference in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in May 2021. In 2025, he co-organized the first symposium on in collaboration with Wellesley College. Two of his online courses are available on SWAYAM. The first is on and the second is on .

Works

Monographs:
  • Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities: Sustenance and Sustainability
  • *Reviews -
  • Science and Socio-Religious Revolution in India: Moving the Mountains
  • *Reviews -
  • Dharma in America: A Short History of Hindu-Jain Diaspora
  • *Reviews -
  • Modern Jainism: A Historical Approach
  • Visual Anthropology of Indian Films: Religious Communities and Cultural Traditions in Bollywood and Beyond
  • Jainism: From Bhagwan Mahavira to Mahatma Gandhi.
Edited volumes:
Articles:
  • Essays in the
  • Essays in
  • Essay on Climate Engineering from Hindu-Jain Perspectives in
  • Articles in

    Awards and recognitions

Jain's first book was selected for the DANAM Book Prize and Uberoi Foundation Award. He is a recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru International Fellowship for Environmental Leadership, IIAS Fellowship, and Wenner-Gren Grant. In addition, he was nominated for the Sustainability Leadership Award from Memnosyne Institute. He is on the editorial boards of the journals and . He also serves on the advisory boards for Yale University's , the , , , , and . He also serves as .