Sticky Souls and Moral Matter: Karma in Jain Thought

Dr. Lynna Dhanani 

Lynna Dhanani obtained her doctorate at Yale University and is currently an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of California, Davis. Lynna's research interests include Jainism, Sanskrit and Prakrit literatures, yoga, Indian philosophy, and South Asian religious art and material culture. Her current book project explores the confluence of poetic and aesthetic expression and philosophical debate in the Sanskrit hymns of the celebrated twelfth-century Shvetambara Jain Hemacandra—court pandit to two Hindu kings of medieval Gujarat—and of the hymns in Prakrit and Apabhramsha of his contemporaries in medieval northwest India. 

She co-curated the 2022-23 exhibition of Jain shrine hangings (choḍ) at the UCLA Fowler museum and is a co-author for the exhibition volume titled Visualizing Devotion: Jain Embroidered Shrine Hangings (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA, 2025). Dhanani received a Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence, Senior Scholar Research Fellowship in India (2024-25) and a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellowship (2022-23) at the University of Chicago as part of the Entanglements of Indian Pasts project for her work on the Indian manuscript preservation projects of the great 20th-century Jain scholar monk Muni Jambuvijaya.