New Fellows for the 2025-26 UCI Process Studies and South Asia Prize Announced

Brianne Donaldson
| September 5, 2025

The University of California, Irvine Process Studies and South Asia fellowship has been awarded to two researchers.

Kazi Adi Shakti

Independent Scholar and Artist

Fellowship Project: Creative Synthesis of Negative Dialectics and Re/Constructive Ontology in Śāntarakṣita, Mipham and Process Buddhism

Kazi Adi Shakti is affiliated with the Center for Process Studies, where she leads monthly learning circles and reading groups. Her research explores the intersections of process-relational ontology, Madhyamaka Buddhist dialectics, Marxian political economy, and ecofeminist theory, with a focus on their integration into a holistic framework that aims to address deep-historical and planetary-scale issues.

Rishabh Gandhi

Vishwakarma University, Pune, India

Fellowship Project: Death as a Process: A Whiteheadian Philosophical Reading of Sallekhanā in Jainism

Rishabh Gandhi is a doctoral candidate at Vishwakarma University, Pune, India, researching the ethico-legal dimensions of Sallekhanā in Jainism, with emphasis on constitutional law, religious freedom, philosophy, and comparative bioethics. A Gold Medalist in Law and former Trial Court Judge in India, he is also an Advocate, Arbitrator, and Mediator, with teaching and publications bridging law, religion, and ethics.

Fellows receive a $1500 award and optional conference support in addition to mentorship with Dr. Brianne Donaldson and the search committee to culminate their research into a journal article submission, possible conference presentations, and other public output over the course of the year.

Brianne Donaldson explores the implicit foundational beliefs that inform social inclusion and ethical action toward plants, animals, and marginalized people. She is the author of Creaturely Cosmologies: Why Metaphysics Matters for Animal and Planetary Liberation (2015) exploring Jainism and Whitehead’s process philosophy, and Insistent Life: Principles for Bioethics in the Jain Tradition (2021, co-authored with Ana Bajželj). She is the editor of Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment (2014), The Future of Meat Without Animals (2016; co-edited with Christopher Carter), and Feeling Animal Death: Being Host to Ghosts (2019; co-edited with Ashley King). Brianne holds the Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies at University of California, Irvine.