Jesse Berger holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religions from UChicago Divinity School and a M.Sc. in Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He specializes in South Asian Sanskrit philosophy, with a particular interest in the dialogical evolution of Buddhism and Śaivism in medieval Kashmir. His work is characterized by a cross-cultural methodology that often brings 20th Century Anglo-American philosophers into conversation with ancient Indian counterparts in a constructive attempt to articulate the common epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions of culturally disparate schools of philosophy. His dissertation—entitled Thinking In-Between: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Problem of Relations in South Asian Philosophy—speaks to this approach, drawing upon the pragmatic hermeneutics of C.S. Peirce and William James to taxonomically categorize and rationally reconstruct the relational philosophies of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Buddhism, and Kashmir Śaivism. He has published articles in journals like Philosophy East and West, The Journal of Indian Philosophy, and Religions. Other areas of interest include process philosophy; religion and science; philosophy of physics; embodied cognitive science; Buddhist modernism; the secularization of religious practices, and the related ‘spiritual but not religious’ phenomenon. In his spare time, he can be found playing jazz guitar in the manouche style of Django Reinhardt, or producing synth-wave electronic music with his Roland Juno-106.

Justin N. Smolin is a historian of South Asian religions who currently holds the position of Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His work concerns interfaith interaction, political theology and translation: in particular, whether the term and concept, “religion,” is translatible to times and places outside the modern West. Justin obtained his BA from the University of Chicago, and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is currently revising his monograph, tentatively titled Krishna the Emperor, which reads the translation movement of an early modern South Asian sacred king, Akbar, as an innovative political theology of religious difference. Justin has published peer-reviewed articles in Open Theology and in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society; he is also currently at work on a critical edition and translation of an ecuminical Islamicate universal history. In his spare time, Justin enjoys songwriting and cooking (particularly nihari, galouti kebabs, and Cincinnati-style chili).

Raffaello De Leon-Jones Dian is a PhD candidate at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris-Marseille) under the supervision of Prof. Fabrizio Speziale. He has a BA in Sanskrit from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (2021) and a Masters in Religious Sciences from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (2020) which he completed after a three-year cycle of “classes préparatoires” in France (2016). His previous research focused on narratives of Jesus in India. Along with Mughal patronage of non-Muslim ascetics, he works on Indo-Persian manuscripts and Persian translations from Sanskrit.