This is a reminder that the next lecture of our virtual event series, “Emerging Scholars in Jain Studies,” will take place this Friday, September 30, 2022, 9:00-10:30am PDT. You can find more information about the speaker Dr. Adrian Plau (Wellcome Collection) and the lecture below.

Register for the event here:

https://ucr.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwkcO2hqz0jHdEq8aecqI3UFT6wIpHrOlVf

Best wishes, 

Lynna Dhanani and Ana Bajzelj


Collections and Communities

In this talk, Dr. Adrian Plau will reflect on two themes that have interlinked throughout his career and now are central to his work: collections and communities. Drawing a line from his PhD project, which focused on manuscripts accessed in Jain temple libraries across North India, to his present role in the gallery, library, archive, and museum (GLAM) sector where he is part of the management and cataloguing of Wellcome Collection’s manuscript collections, he will situate these themes in his ongoing Headley Fellowship with the Art Fund, which seeks to develop a model for manuscript repatriation driven by collections information work with Wellcome Collection’s Jain manuscripts.

Dr. Adrian Plau is Manuscript Collections Information Analyst at Wellcome Collection, working particularly with making the Collection’s global manuscripts more accessible and discoverable to wider audiences. As a 2018-2019 Wellcome Trust Research Bursary-holder, he led a project on Wellcome Collection’s early Hindi medical manuscripts. His 2018 SOAS PhD presented a critical edition and literary study of the Sitacarit, a vernacular narrative of the seventeenth century that recounts the Ramayana epic from Sita’s perspective. His research has featured in publications such as Religions, Sikh Formations, and the Oxford History of Hinduism. He is a contributor to Digital Orientalist and writes a monthly column on Indian poetry for Asiapunkt. A 2022-23 recipient of the Headley Fellowship with the Art Fund, he is currently building a model for responsible repatriation of global manuscripts from GLAM institutions to source communities based in London.