Lester R. Kurtz is a professor of sociology and anthropology at George Mason University. He is an expert in Gandhian thought and  editor of the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace & Conflict and lectures around the world on violence, politics and peacemaking.

Peter Gottschalk is a professor of religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. He studies the dynamic of the cultural interplay between Hinduism, Islam, and the West.

Whitney Sanford is an assistant professor of religion at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She is an expert on Hindu narratives of agriculture and religion and nature in South Asia.

Eliza Kent is an assistant professor of religion at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. She specializes in Hinduism and the environment in South India.

Joanne Punzo Waghorne is a professor of religion at Syracuse University where she works in contemporary theoretical directions in the study of religion, new religious movements, globalization, and transnational migration. She has written a book about the construction of Hindu temples and their internal organizations in urban areas, including Washington, D.C.

Timothy Lubin is an associate professor of religion at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. He teaches a course on Hindu temples.

Linda B. Hess is a lecturer in religious studies at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. She is an expert in the poetry of 15th- and 16th-century Hindu saints and can discuss their continued influence.

Brad Pellish is the outreach pastor at Bethany Bible Church in Phoenix, Ariz., which performs outreach to local sex workers, including teenage prostitutes. Read an article about the church’s work.

Guy L. Beck is an adjunct professor at Tulane University in the Asian studies and religion studies departments. He is the author of Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound.