University of North Texas 
Leah Kalmanson
Faculty
Bhagwan Adinath Professor of Jain Studies
Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion
Founding Editor of Samyak: An Undergraduate Journal of Jain Studies
UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion
Environmental Sciences Building 320C
Leah Kalmanson is an Associate Professor and the Bhagwan Adinath Professor of Jain Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa in 2010. Before coming to UNT she taught for over a decade at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Dr. Kalmanson actively engages the rich heritage of world philosophies in both scholarly and pedagogical contexts. Her books include Local Gods: A Philosophy of Spiritual Diversity (Columbia University Press, 2026), Cross-Cultural Existentialism (Bloomsbury, 2020), and A Practical Guide to World Philosophies (coauthored with Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, Bloomsbury, 2021). Her essays appear in journals including Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Continental Philosophy Review, Frontiers of Philosophy in China, Hypatia, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Journal of World Philosophies, Philosophy East & West, Pragmatism Today, Religion, Shofar, Studies in Chinese Religions, and Teaching Philosophy, as well as the digital magazines Aeon and The Immanent Frame. She is currently a managing editor for the Bloomsbury series Introductions to World Philosophies.
Books
Selected Essays
A contribution to a forum on Buddhist historiography at The Immanent Frame. September 3, 2025.
A co-authored article with Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach for the digital magazine
Aeon. March 7, 2022.
Symposium on Cross-Cultural Existentialism by Leah Kalmanson for Syndicate: A Living Network of Scholarship in the Humanities. August 2022.
Media and Interviews
An interview with Leah Kalmanson for The Global Existential Summit. October 14,
2023.
An interview with Leah Kalmanson and Nilanjan Das for the podcast Microphilosophy
with Julian Baggini, episode 5. April 23, 2023.
An interview with Leah Kalmanson by Malcolm Keating on Cross-Cultural Existentialism for the New Books Network. October 20, 2022.
A recorded lecture for the Royal Institute of Philosophy's London Lecture Series. October 28, 2021.
An interview with Leah Kalmanson and Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach by Malcolm Keating
on A Practical Guide to World Philosophies for the New Books Network. March 19, 2021.
An interview with Leah Kalmanson by Tom Burge on the article "Buddhism and bell
hooks" for the Buddhist Philosophy Podcast, episode 5. July 23, 2020.