Jensine Andresen

Jensine Andresen (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1997) is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religion at Columbia University in NYC. She previously taught at comparative world religions and religion and science at both Boston University and the University of Vermont. Dr. Andresen holds a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering from Princeton University; a Certificate from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology focusing on China from Columbia University; and an A.M. and Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University, where she focused on medieval Buddhist philosophy and practice in India and Tibet.

Introduction to 'Issues for the Millennium'...

At Boston University, where the ‘Issues for the Millennium’ conference took place, Dr. Andresen taught in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Her research there focused on bioethics as it relates to social justice and humanitarian concerns, such as those that surround the AIDS crisis in Africa and the world. Her work at BU addressed the interface of theology and public policy as it relates to xenotransplantation, gene therapy, human cloning, stem cell research, and intellectual property rights. Also while at BU, she conducted research on the role of the frontal lobes in mediating the relationship between spirituality and health. While at BU, Dr. Andresen also edited two volumes on the interface of cognitive science and religious experience, Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Spiritual Models and Cognitive Maps: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Religious Experience (London: Imprint Academic, 2000). She also served as Director of InterFASE (International Faith & Science Exchange) , an organization committed to furthering dialogue between science and religion in the Boston area and elsewhere throughout the world.

At Columbia University, Dr. Andresen has been focusing on developing a psychoanalytic interpretation of Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana doctrine and practice as she has worked on translating the Sanskrit commentary on a medieval Indian Buddhist Vajrayana text called the Srilaghu Kalacakratantra. She has also worked extensively on the relationship between the phenomenology of contemplation in the Tibetan ‘Rdzgoschen’ (Great Perfection) system as it relates to contemporary findings in physics. Combining psychoanalytic, postmodern, and phenomenological approaches to the encounter of so-called self and other, she works to understand the interpenetrative arising of cosmology, biology, and awareness.