Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, FBA is the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. His research focuses on Indian religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – and comparative phenomenology, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of religion. His studies include the conceptual roots of contemporary beliefs, politics and conflict in religious context, and the religious identities of South Asian diaspora in the United Kingdom. He was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017.Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad FBA, The British Academy, UK (2018) In 2026 he became Vice-President (Humanities) at the British Academy.
Education Ram-Prasad is an alumnus of Sri Sathya Sai Institute, and earned a masters and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford.
Career and Work Ram-Prasad is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy in the School of Global Affairs at Lancaster University. He was the Associate Dean for Research, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (2009–14) and Deputy Dean of the Faculty (2024-26). He has been a regular contributor to the BBC Radio 4's Beyond Belief and Sunday Programme in the United Kingdom.Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Bloomsbury Academic, UK He has been a member of Council of Research England, UKRI since 2021, and a member of the Academic Panel of the Leverhulme Trust likewise.
Ram-Prasad has published seven books and nearly sixty peer-reviewed articles on Indian religions, comparative religions (Hindu-Christian, Buddhism in India and China), contemporary Indian politics and religion, multiculturalism and British society, and comparative political philosophy. His studies have included religious literature in Sanskrit, Pali and Tamil.
In a review of Ram-Prasad's award-winning book Divine Self, Human Self based on the Bhagavad Gita, the Cambridge University scholar Ankur Barua states, "Ram-Prasad skilfully engages Śaṁkara and Rāmānuja in conversations over classical Vedantic themes of selfhood, being, and agency" to exegetically and hermeneutically explain how these two influential Hindu scholars interpreted the same text to reach two views of Self (Atman) in Hindu philosophy.
Honours His book "Divine Self, Human Self" was the winner of the Best Book 2011–15, by the Society for Hindu Christian Studies.
In July 2017, Ram-Prasad was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences, and since 2026 has been its Vice-President (humanities).
Selected publications Books Knowledge and Liberation in Classical Indian Thought (Palgrave, 2001), Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An outline of Indian non-realism (Routledge, 2002), Eastern Philosophy (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005) , which has been translated into French, Polish and Finnish
Human Being, Bodily Being. Phenomenology from Classical India. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Some Journal articles and chapters
References
External links Lakshmi, BBC Radio 4 In Our Time, link. Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad on the panel with Jessica Frazier and Jacqueline Suthren-Hirst.