Melanie Barbato (network coordinator) is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for Religious Studies and Inter-Faith Theology at the University of Münster and project director of the research project Hindu-Christian Dialogue in a Religiously Plural World at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She currently researches the Vatican’s and World Council of Churches’ involvement in Hindu-Christian relations, funded by the German Research Foundation. Her doctoral thesis Jain Approaches to Plurality: Identity as Dialogue has been published by Brill in the series Currents of Encounter. She is an associate editor of CrossCurrents and has edited a special issue on the theme of interreligious dialogue and diplomacy.

Shruti Dixit (network coordinator) is a doctoral researcher at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics, School of Divinity, University of St Andrews. Her research deals with reimagining revelation in Hinduism and Christianity to facilitate a dialogue using the full works of Raimon Panikkar. Shruti currently holds the Further Education Institution Seat at the Interfaith Scotland’s Youth Advisory Board and has been working towards organizing interfaith meetups in India as a Fellow of the Royal society for the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, podcast host of Indian Religion at the New Books Network, and former Topic Editor of Hinduism at Practical Theology Hub. 

Ihsan Altintas (communication officer) is a doctoral researcher at the Institute for Religious Studies and Inter-Faith Theology at the University of Münster. His research focuses on Attitudes Towards Religious Diversity in Islam and Hinduism using a comparative method. He completed his first Master degree at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, specializing in philosophy and culture. He also obtained a second Master at Ibn Haldun University in Turkey, where he wrote a thesis on Revivalist Discourse in Modern Hinduism: A Socio-religious Study of the Ramakrishna Movement conducting ethnographic research in India. His article on Tagore’s Understanding of Civilization was published by the International Journal of The Asian Philosophical Association, and he conducted a podcast on Indian Muslims and Their Views on the Caste System in collaboration with the Istanbul Research and Education Foundation. Additionally, he is a founding member of the Unity in Diversity Association based in Germany.

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt (programme officer) is a professor of religion at Wellesley College in the US. She holds a PhD in religion and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University as well as a B.A. and M.A. from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. Among her research interests are: devotional poetry and sacred arts of South Asia; the divine and the human feminine in Hindu traditions, and Gandhian thought. Her publications include the book A Fire That Blazed in the Ocean: Gandhi and Poems of Satyagraha in South Africa 1909-1911, co-authored with Surendra Bhana (2011, Promilla), the monograph Narainha Mehta of Gujarat: A Legacy of Bhakti in Songs and Stories (2015, Oxford), as well as most recently Hinduism, the Basics (2023, Routledge).

Patricia Palazzo Tsai (interfaith officer) is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at the Methodist University of Sao Paulo, under supervision of Prof. Dr. Jung Mo Sung and co-supervision of Prof. Dr. Mario I. Aguilar (CSRP University of St. Andrews). She is a bachelor in Buddhist Theology at Pramana Institute (2018), Law and Social Sciences in Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas (2008), and Theology in Dom Bosco Catholic University (2022). She is Topic Editor in Buddhism and Assistant Editor at the Practical Theology Hub, Legal Director of the Buddha-Dharma Association (BUDA) and its Institutes – Pramana Institute and Thomasian Institute; and co-founder of Sakyadhita São Paulo Association of Buddhist Women.