Laura Malia Dunn, Ph.D., is a scholar, educator, creative, and program leader whose work centers on transformation: how people change and grow, how communities create meaning across difference, and how institutions can support human flourishing. With a scholarly background in religious studies and the Dharma traditions, she has studied the ways embodied practice, cross-cultural encounter, and interreligious learning can cultivate self-awareness, empathy, ethical responsibility, and more relational ways of understanding the self and others. Her work increasingly brings these questions into conversation with Indigenous knowledge, decolonization, cultural accountability, and the responsibilities that accompany institutional power.

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Dr. Dunn currently directs Open for Antiracism, a statewide professional development initiative supporting California community college faculty in using open education, culturally responsive teaching, and antiracist pedagogy. Previously, at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, she directed the Master of Theological Studies program and the Office of Teaching, Learning & Assessment, where she led curriculum development, assessment, accreditation, faculty support, and intercultural student formation. Across these roles, she has focused on translating ethical commitments into educational programming, sustainable educational practice through curriculum, program design, assessment, organizational systems, and relationship-centered leadership.

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Her scholarship and public work span interreligious dialogue, yoga and contemplative studies, Indigenous cultural revitalization, and equity-centered pedagogy. Her publications include Retelling Sacred Stories: Our Journeys to a Shared Sacred Story (Orbis/Fetzer, 2025) and the forthcoming Movement, Mindfulness, and Cultural Revitalization: Indigenous Contemplative Theories and Practices (Springer). Her work has been supported by the Hewlett Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mind & Life Institute, Templeton-supported research, and other fellowships and grants. Across scholarship, teaching, editorial work, and institutional leadership, she is most interested in building learning environments that are intellectually rigorous, culturally responsible, relationally grounded, and capable of sustaining meaningful change.