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
Global Continuity: Jainism as an Indian and International Living Culture
Prof. Dr. Julia A.B. Hegewald
5pm Wednesday 24 February 2027
Auditorium, St John's College, University of Oxford
(Free Admission)
The previous five lectures have shown that Jaina culture is a highly adaptable and resilient tradition, displaying an impressive endurance and stability. It is this aspect of continuity which will form the focus of the last lecture in this series. The area of continuity will also tie together the core aspects of all previous lectures and open the discussion towards more global debates. Jaina art is not a monolithic and unchanging given and despite its cohesion and unique identity, it has constantly absorbed new external influences, which are necessary to keep a culture alive. In the area of Jaina temple building, for instance, in the modern age, new types have been developed, adapting the architecture to changing patterns of pilgrimage and professional relocation. Jainism and its cultural expressions did not remain within their Indic geographic limits and in the context of global mobility and migration also spread to distant parts of the world. In the diaspora, Jaina architecture entered into a creative dialogue with local concepts and features, resulting in fascinating hybrid styles. Furthermore, museum collections of Jaina art today expose artefacts representative of its culture to a wider global audience.
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).
