Laura M. Dunn, Ph.D., is the director of the Master of Theological Studies program and the Writing Program at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University and faculty for the Center of Dharma Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, where she teaches courses on non-dual Tantra, yoga studies, and Śāktism.  She is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Dharma Studies: Asian and Transcultural Religion, Philosophy, & Ethics, a peer-reviewed academic journal that employs theoretical and empirical methodologies for the intersubjective understanding of and critical-constructive reflections on Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions (Dharma Studies).

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Drawing from her Native Hawaiian, Chinese, and Jewish background, Laura seeks to engage the complex ways in which globalization influences religion, education, and the arts. Her current research explores the ways in which embodied indigenous epistemologies converge and diverge with somatic practices such as yoga āsana and how these practices are used to recover identity in post- and Neo-colonial contexts. 

 

Laura has won several writing awards, such as the Francis Powers Award (2015), the Chan Writing Award (2017), and the Borsch-Rast Dissertation Award (2021). She is a Presidential Scholar, Newhall Fellow, Interreligious Collaborative Research Fellow (2018), two-time CARe Grant recipient (2018, 2020), and recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Association for Asian Studies Publication Grant (2022). She is an animal advocate, enjoys meditation, fitness, photography, and nature, and lives in the Bay Area and Honolulu.