Last Thursday (14 May 2026) at the House of Commons was a historic moment as the Wellcome Collection restituted 2,000 precious Jain manuscripts to the Jain community represented by the Institute of Jainology. We were deeply honoured that our Dharmanath Network in Jain studies has been asked to shelter this precious heritage as we are working with the community to secure that this return has maximum impact for students, researchers, members of the community, and for the general public.
The Dharmanath Network in Jain Studies, University of Birmingham was established in 2023 thanks to a generous donation from the UK and global Jain community to the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham.
The Network works in close collaboration with the community to enhance the societal impact of Jainism and of Jain values, especially interfaith dialogue and non-violence, through engagement between academic, religious, cultural, and political institutions.
The Network is committed to teaching Jainism and Jain values at every level of study in a way that addresses the pressing questions of our time, with a particular focus on interreligious dialogue, philosophy of religion and the ethics of non-violence.
As such, it marks an ambitious collaboration between scholars in Jain Studies and scholars in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham and the activities of the Network are closely tied to that of the "Global Philosophy of Religion: Fundamental Spiritual Reality, Human Purpose, and Living Well" project, as we ensure that the voices of traditionally underrepresented traditions are given a proper place. This includes enhancing the fluidity between the disciplines to address the fact that relevant disciplinary boundaries are not the same ones across different traditions. Our School is especially well-designed to address this, starting by the traditional gap between philosophy and religious studies.
The Dharmanath Network further aims to enhance the academic excellence of Jain Studies by developing the academic landscape in Jain philosophy.
Our members include:
. Marie-Hélène Gorisse, Assistant Professor in Jain Studies
. Christina Easton, Assistant Professor in the Ethics of Non-Violence
. Jinesh Sheth, Post-Doctoral Researcher in Jain Studies
Our activities
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. In collaboration with the Jain community, we will shelter the 2,000 precious Jain manuscripts that the Wellcome Collection restituted to the Institute of Jainology, and we will make sure that this precious heritage has maximum impact for students, researchers, members of the community, and for the general public.
. We are cataloguing the Paul Dundas Collection, having received the donation of Paul’s world-leading collection of books in Jain Studies after his untimely passing in April 2023.
. We are partners of the Institute of Jainology to notably increase the representation of Jain Philosophy in the soon-to-be-released new version of Jainpedia.
. We organise regular academic events, like the conference "History, Scripture and Debate: Studies in South Asia in Memory of Paul Dundas" (September 2025), the symposium "(Non-)One-Sidedness", or the "Dharmanath Jain Studies Graduate Symposium" (April 2025).
. We launched the Dialogues in European Jain Studies online lecture series in collaboration with Ghent University and the Arihant Institute.
. Gorisse and Sheth are respectively co-founder and member of the Jaina Philosophy Research Group, which for the first time gathers researchers from Europe, India, and the States to complicate the common generalizations about Jain philosophy by exploring its complexity and historical development. Many of the members of this group are trained as philosophers and would eventually also like to see Jain philosophy enter more mainstream philosophical discussions. We find that, apart from publishing secondary sources, providing accessible translations is an important step in this direction. We also think these kinds of projects are very important for the Jain community since they aim to preserve its rich philosophical heritage and transmit it to the next generation of Jains both in India and the diaspora. So far, very few Jain philosophical texts have been translated into English and Jain studies is severely lagging behind Hindu and Buddhist studies in this regard. The group’s work has so far mostly focused on the various expressions of the Jain doctrine of anekāntavāda (non-one-sidedness). The activities of our group include a group translation of one of the most important and challenging texts on the Jain theory of non-one-sidedness, namely Akalaṅka’s Aṣṭaśatī, or The Eight Hundred, which is the first extant commentary on Samantabhadra’s Āptamīmāṃsā, or An Examination of an Authority. Next to this, an edited volume Anekāntavāda: Sources and Varieties (Special Issue of the Journal of Indian Philosophy co-edited by Gorisse and Anil Mundra) is forthcoming; and workshops are reluglarly organised, most lately the first "Jain Philosophy Across Traditions" event, focusing on exchanges with the Mīmāṃsā tradition, was co-organised by our colleagues Ana Bajželj and Anil Mundra at Riverside, California (April 2026).
The Network is called “Dharmanath” in honour of the 15th enlightened Jain teacher, the protector of a righteous religious way of living.
