Braja Bihari Dasa (Brian Bloch) is the director of ISKCONResolve, ISKCON’s conflict management system. He is presently studying for his Master’s degree in Conflict Transformation at Eastern Mennonite University. He is a trained mediator and ombudsman having mediated dozens of ISKCON-related conflicts and met with hundreds of visitors to his ombud’s office. He is the former director of the Vrindavan Institute of Higher Education. Originally from New York, he joined ISKCON in 1977. He now lives in Vrindavan, India, with his wife Ananda Vrndavana Devi Dasi and their son, Gopinath.
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C. Mackenzie Brown is Professor and Chair of Religion at Trinity University in San Antonio. He has a PhD (1973) in the History of Religion from Harvard University, with specialisation in the Hindu Tradition. For most of his career his research interests focused on the Great Goddess in the Puranic literature. For the last few years, he has been exploring the relation of religion and science both in the West and in Asia. His most recent publications in this area include: ‘Hindu and Christian Creationism: “Transposed Passages” in the Geological Book of Life’, in Zygon (Vol. 37 No. 1), and ‘The Conflict between Religion and Science in the Light of the Patterns of Religious Belief among Scientists’, in Zygon (Vol. 38, No. 3).
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Jonathan B. Edelmann, a native of Boston, is currently a DPhil student at the University of Oxford. His area of research is the relationship of Vaisnava conceptions of nature and creation with contemporary evolutionary theory. He has a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, and an MA from Oxford. He has contributed to Journals including Metanexus, ISKCON Communications Journal, and the Journal of Vaishnava Studies.
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Dr Ravi M. Gupta (Radhika Ramana Dasa) is a member of the Faculty of Theology at Oxford University and a Junior Research Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. He holds a DPhil in Vaisnnava Theology and a master’s degree in Religious Studies. His doctoral dissertation focused on the early development of Caitanya Vaisnava Vedanta, as found in the writings of Jiva Gosvami. Ravi has lectured widely and published numerous articles on Hindu religious and philosophical traditions.
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Jayadvaita Swami, a disciple of ISKCON’s founder, Srila Prabhupada, received spiritual initiation in 1968, at the age of nineteen. From stapling booklets he went on to typing manuscripts, transcribing Srila Prabhupada’s dictation, and then typesetting, proofreading, managing book production, and editing. Since 1988 he has served as a director of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. From 1991–8 he served as editor in chief of Back to Godhead magazine. Recently he served as chief editor for the BBT’s three-volume edition of Sri Brhad-bhagavatamrta, a sixteenth-century Sanskrit philosophical and devotional work.
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Felix Machado was appointed by Pope John Paul II as under-secretary at the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. A PhD at Fordham University in New York, his doctoral research was on the Jnaneshvari, a commentary on the Bhagavad-gita by Sant Jnaneshvar, a thirteenth-century Bhakti Saint from Maharastra. He has written over one-hundred articles in various reviews in English, Marathi, Italian, and French and is a part-time lecturer in two different universities in Rome. He completed his studies in Bombay University, Bombay Diocesan Seminary, Catholic Faculty in Lyons, Maryknoll School of Theology, New York and Fordham Unversity, New York. He was born and raised in Vasai (near Mumbai), India.
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Premananda Dasa has been a member of ISKCON since 1992. From 1994–2004, he served in several capacities at the ISKCON temple in Boston, including Pastoral Director and Director of Interfaith Relations. He also served as its Co-President from 2001–3. He currently lives near Manchester, New Hampshire. He is author of two yet-to-be-published works: God Among Us—The Absolute, Incarnation and Avatara, and Returning to and Returning God’s Love—The Essence of Bhagavad-gita. He holds a BA in Political Science and Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Rasamandala Dasa is a disciple of Srila Prabhupada and runs an educational consultancy in Oxford. He is co-director of ISKCON Educational Services, the largest provider of educational resources on Hinduism in the UK. He is also a founding member of Vaishnava Training and Education (VTE), and currently holds responsibility for teacher training and curriculum development. Rasamandala’s main interests are in promoting an educational ethos within ISKCON and in establishing systems of formal education as a means towards effective leadership. He is completing an MA in Religious Education at Warwick University and has been accepted for a doctorate study exploring Hinduism and pedagogy.
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Rev. Maurice Ryan, a Presbyterian minister, is the President and founder of the Northern Ireland Interfaith Forum, an organisation that ‘brings together people from across the spectrum of religious life in Northern Ireland for fellowship and mutual understanding’. He is the author of Another Ireland, a study of the variety of religious traditions found in Ireland, and was formerly Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Stranmillis University College, Belfast. He lives in Belfast with his wife, Jean.
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Professor Keith Ward is the Regius Professor Emeritus of Divinity at the University of Oxford. He is also a fellow of the British Academy. He is a priest of the Church of England and Student of Christ Church, Oxford. He holds Doctor of Divinity degrees from Cambridge and Oxford Universities. Formerly Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Professor of History and Philosophy of Religion at the University of London, he has lectured at the Universities of Glasgow, St. Andrew’s, and Cambridge. He is a member of the Governing Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and has taught at Drake University, Claremont Graduate School, and the University of Tulsa. His publications include: God, Chance and Necessity (1996), God, Faith and the New Millennium (1998), Religion and Human Nature (1998), Religion and Community (2000), God: a Guide for the Perplexed (2002), and The Case for Religion (2004).
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