by Alex Russell
This year, the Fulbright Program named two College of Letters and Science faculty as scholars who will advance their research with international colleagues. Fulbright US Scholar Awards, administered through the U.S. Department of State, are among the most prestigious international awards.
Ron Mangun, a distinguished professor of psychology and neurology, will partner with colleagues at the University of Birmingham, UK to expand his research on attention and free will. Lynna Dhanani, an assistant professor of religious studies, will travel to India to study medieval Jain devotional hymns while actively engaging local scholars, Jain communities and Indian research institutions.
“This Fulbright award is a way of building connections through science and scholarship, and these connections increase understanding and deepen collaborations between people and countries while building a global network of scholars,” said Mangun, who is also founder and director of the Center for Mind and Brain (CMB).
Dhanani was awarded the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award for the 2024-25 academic year. This October she will travel to India for nine months where she will be based at Ahmedabad University in Gujarat. However, she will also travel across the country to small towns and pilgrimage sites to investigate several manuscript libraries.
Dhanani is working on a book that explores the diversity of Jain hymns produced in the classical language of Sanskrit and the older Indian vernacular languages of Prakrit and Apabhramsha in 11th-13th century Gujarat. While many of these hymns are still in use after several centuries by today’s Jain community, Dhanani said that they remain vastly understudied.
“The more than 2,000-year-old tradition of composing and reciting hymns remains a foundational aspect of Jain religious practice,” said Dhanani. “Their composers were great poets and scholars and sought to do really creative things with these hymns, giving us insight into Jain cultural practice and intellectual work.”