Ashwini Mokashi is a lecturer in Hindi and a tutor in Marathi at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. An accomplished author and comparative philosopher, she examines the intersections between ancient Indian philosophy and Classical Greek thought, highlighting their continuing relevance to contemporary ethical and personal challenges.

At Oxford, Dr Mokashi is also a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and a member of Wolfson College. Her research explores thematic parallels between the Bhagavad-Gita and Stoic philosophy, especially in the works of Seneca. Her book, Sapiens and Sthitaprajna (2019), and its Hindi translation (2024) offers a comparative study of the concept of the wise person in these traditions.

Before her full-time academic career, Dr Mokashi spent a decade in corporate USA as an executive compensation manager. This experience deepened her work as a certified philosophical counselor and as the founder of Philosophy and Happiness, LLC, which applies ancient wisdom to modern dilemmas.

A former two-term President of the Princeton Research Forum, Dr Mokashi is committed to public philosophy. She produces educational YouTube videos exploring philosophical themes in music and poetry and writes a multilingual blog in Hindi, Marathi, English, and German.

Her academic training at the University of Pune, King’s College, London, and Rutgers University complements her extensive community engagement. She has taught philosophy to youth in a detention center in Pune, volunteered at Trenton soup kitchen, taught comparative philosophy at the Evergreen Forum in Princeton, and during the COVID-19 pandemic, organised no-contact blood drives in Montgomery, New Jersey that collected enough blood to help save approximately 1,100 lives.

Through her research, teaching, corporate experience, counseling practice, and community engagement, Ashwini Mokashi exemplifies the role of the philosopher as a bridge between traditions, applying timeless wisdom to address the ethical and practical challenges of modern society.