Diana Eck was born on 5 July 1945 in Tacoma, Washington. A religious studies scholar, she received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton and the National Endowment for the Humanities for her work on American religious pluralism. Joining Harvard in 1976, she was Faculty Dean of Lowell House for twenty years. She is currently Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and Frederic Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society. In 1991, she founded The Pluralism Project, mapping ‘the new religious landscape in America’.
Eck was appointed to a State Department Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad in 1996. She received the American Academy of Religion Martin Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion in 2002 and was President of the American Academy of Religion in 2005. Important works include Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India (1981), Banaras: City of Light (1982), Speaking of Faith: Global Perspectives on Women, Religion and Social Change, edited with Devaki Jain (1985), Encountering God (1993), World Religions in Boston (1994), A New Religious America (2001), and India: Sacred Geography (2012).
