Read about Contemplative Studies Concentrator and NBA star DeAndre Jordan -- and incorporating contemplative practice into his game.

Please join Brown’s Contemplative Studies Initiative for a lecture by Professor Mark Unno, University of Oregon, on April 17th from 5:30 - 7 pm in Friedman Auditorium, the Metcalf Research Building. Professor Unno will be lecturing on : Buddhist Chanting as Contemplative Practice: Deep Listening, Deep Hearing.

Please join us for the Contemplative Studies' Spring Open House on Tuesday, April 11th from 6:30 - 8:30 pm in Horace Mann, Rms. 102 and 103.

Virtual Contemplative Mentors in Residence Program and Lectures, Workshops and Concerts

Read Professor Moore-Gerety's Interview on his course class Food, Religion, and Politics in South Asia.

Ryan is a senior concentrating in Contemplative Studies.

Michael D. Kennedy is Professor of Sociology and of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

To read Professor Moore-Gerety's Interview on his course class Food, Religion, and Politics in South Asia, please click here.

Contemplative Studies is featured on the Brown student produced audio platform, Now Here This. This platform, updated weekly, and completely student run, provides listeners with in depth storytelling, investigative journalism, memoirs, interviews and more.

On Jan. 8, Prof. Harold Roth, Director of Contemplative Studies, was interviewed on the Gary Null Show, WBAI New York. Prof. Roth discussed the emerging field of Contemplative Studies and the new concentration here at Brown. To listen to the interview, please click here.

Contemplative Studies at Brown was recently featured in an article by the Huffington Post. The article details the recent creation of the Contemplative Studies concentration at Brown and the larger impact of the program to the field and beyond.

Contemplative Studies core faculty member, Eric Loucks, Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, has recently published a study in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, evaluating associations between mindfulness and cardiovascular health.

Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and member of Contemplative Studies core faculty, Dr. Catherine Kerr recently gave an insightful interview regarding the portrayal of mindfulness research in the media. The interview, appearing in Tricycle, details how the mainstream media has "cherry-picked" studies, and really hasn't thoroughlly investigated or reported on the studies that are out there. She goes on to explain why this important, how to more fully undserstand the data that is out there, and ideas for the future.

The Brown University School of Public Health announces a new research project related to Contemplative Studies, "Identifying Targets for Reducing Obseity Caused by Early Life Disadvantage."

The news of Brown's new concentration in Contemplative Studies has been picked up by the prominent media outlet, USA Today. The article explains the concentration and it's relevance in today's world, stating "The program finds a common thread - contemplation - across disciplines to study how this component of human experience differs between cultures, societies, and time periods and from the viewpoints of scientists, humanists, or artists...Contemplative Studies graduates have gone on to use these skills in medical school, in research jobs, through PhD coursework, and in one case, becoming a Tibetan Buddhits monk." To view the article in it's entirity, please click here.

The College Curriculum Council has approved Contemplative Studies as a scholarly concentration, the first of its kind in North America. The concentration will have two main tracks, one focused on the sciences, and the other on the humanities. Both tracks require coursework in neuroscience, cognitive science as well as philosophy and religion. For more details, please check out the Brown Daily Herald article announcing the news. More information on the new concentration will be availabe on the website soon!

The Brown Daily Herald has recently highlighted a new study by Prof. Willoughby Britton, Psychiatry and Human Behavior, Brown University and Prof. Jared Lindahl, Professor of Religion at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. The study is a neurobilogical examination of reports by Buddhist practioners of seeing lights and globes during meditation over the ages. The study was published on Jan. 3 by the journal Frontiers in Psychology. To see the full article in The Brown Daily Herald, please click here.

Brown Contemplative Studies Initiative is pleased to announce a visit by renowned meditation leader, Sharon Salzberg on November 1st and 2nd.

On October 5, Professor Harold D. Roth, Director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, gave the 2012 Kathryn Fraser Mackay Memorial Lecture at St. Lawrence University. The lecture was titled "Contemplative Studies and the Liberal Arts."

On July 7th, 2020, our dear friend and colleague, Oliver White Hill, Jr., died unexpectedly at his home in Richmond, Virginia.

Erik Ehn's unique and critically acclaimed Soulographi will be performed in one week at the La Mama Theatre in New York.

Renowned cognitive scientist, Takeo Watanabe, has moved his Visual Cognition Laboratory from Boston University to the Brown Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences.

On August 31, Catherine E. Kerr, Director of Translational Neuroscience, Contemplative Studies Initiative, and Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, gave a plenary address to the North American Esther Thelan Research Symposium on "Embodying Neuroscience" held in San Mateo, CA.

The Gold Humanism Honor Society, which is dedicated to recognize, support and promte the values of humanism and professionalism in medicine, has named Dr. Willoughby Britton of the Brown University Contemplative Studies Initiatve and the Department of Psychiatry of the Alpert Medical School, as the GHHS Visiting Professor this year.

On April 24th, our colleague Dr. Willoughby Britton, along with five other recipients of Mind and Life Institute's Francisco J. Varela Research Awards, presented findings from pilot projects to His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

In the immediate aftermath of this tragedy, the Zuiganji monastery in the city of Matsushima, where CSI director Professor Hal Roth practiced for over a year, was used as a shelter for displaced residents. The picture above shows Zuiganji's Sutra Hall.

The Brown University Contemplative Studies Initiative is pleased to announce that Dr. Catherine Kerr has joined our faculty. She will be teaching courses both in the regular semester and during the summer term in her specialties of contemplative neuroscience and health sciences.

The Contemplative Studies Fall Event Series will feature the following: