Slade Lectures 2027
Slade Lectures 2027 | Core Concepts of Jaina Art: Visuality and the Jaina Tradition in India and the Diaspora
Image credit: Julia A.B. Hegewald
Cultural Sustainability: The Artistic, Ecological and Political Endurance of the Jaina Tradition
Prof. Dr. Julia A.B. Hegewald
5pm Wednesday 17 February 2027
Auditorium, St John's College, University of Oxford
(Free Admission)
In the lectures so far, we have got to know Jaina culture as a rich visual and architectural tradition that is very productive and vibrant. Nevertheless, the issue of sustainability, namely, the ability of a culture to maintain its unique beliefs, practices and heritage over time, is of significance in a Jaina context, too. On one level, the Jainas have continuously had to adapt to local geographical and climatic conditions and the availability of resources for the creation of icons and religious edifices. The survival of Jaina culture has always depended as much on economic and socio-political as on cultural and environmental factors. There were periods in which Jainism flourished, expanded and even dominated social and political agendas in a given area, and other times when it lost influence and its very survival was threatened. Both the cultural and ecological and the economic and socio-political sustainability of Jaina culture and its visuality and materiality will be discussed in the fifth lecture. In this context, the Jainas’ particular ability to adapt to changing conditions and to overcome difficulties will be emphasised.
Julia A.B. Hegewald is Professor of Oriental Art History and Head of the Department of Asian and Islamic Art History at the University of Bonn. She was a Research Fellow at University College Oxford (1998-2005), Head of an Emmy-Noether-Research Group (German Research Foundation, DFG, 2005-2014) and Reader in Non-Western Art History at Manchester University (2007-2010). Since taking up the Chair in Oriental Art History at Bonn in 2010, Julia Hegewald has been active in a number of international research initiatives. Amongst the most recent are the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS, 2018-2025, 2026-2032), the ERC Synergy Grant Mantrams and the ERC Consolidator Grant ID-Scapes. She has published widely on the art and architecture of the Jaina community in India, most notably Jaina Temple Architecture in India: The Development of a Distinct Language in Space and Ritual (2009, 2018, 2024). In recent years, she has engaged intensively with the Digambara Jaina tradition in the south Indian state of Karnataka, with a number of publications, including The Jaina Heritage: Distinction, Decline and Resilience (2011), Jaina Tradition of the Deccan: Shravanabelagola, Mudabidri, Karkala (2021), Jaina Culture in Medieval Karnataka: Dominance, Dependency and Endurance (2025) and Jainism under Threat: Extreme Forms of Dependency in Medieval Karnataka, South India (2026).
