Congratulations to CSR’s latest Iles Award winner, Patrick Dunn!
Patrick Dunn is a writer, teacher, and researcher – now a Ph.D student in Comparative Studies and a teaching associate at Ohio State University. He investigates religion and its complex channels of influence in the modern world. His current research focuses on UFO/UAP and contact experiences, secrecy, and anomalous spiritualities. From 2013 to 2023, he lived and practiced as a full-time monastic at Great Vow Zen Monastery and was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest in 2018. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and a B.Phil in Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Asian Studies from the University of Pittsburgh Honors College. Shurouq Ibrahim, CSR’S Graduate Research Associate, sat down with Patrick to see what the CSR’s Iles Award means for his research!
Shurouq: Could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your research?
Patrick: Absolutely. My name is Patrick Dunn. That’s the name I was given at birth. I actually have had a different for most of the last decade which is kind of strange because I lived in a Zen Buddhist monastery. The work that I’m doing now relates to the modern UFO phenomena and its relationship to the history of religions and it’s a complex relationship. Basically, thousands of people everyday, really, have direct, genuine experiences with anomalous phenomena and many of those experiences we think of in terms of UFOs. It’s a vague and ambiguous term, deliberately so. What’s happening in these experiences is in many ways a mystery, but I think one helpful way to approach it is as a kind of living myth. We need to think of it as a modern mythic manifestation that is being acted out in real life, in people’s experiences, in their relationships, and how they think about their experiences. So, in some ways, I am just kind of along for the ride, as a scholar, thinking about these extremely fascinating, strange, and revealing incidents along with the people who are experiencing them.
Shurouq: Fascinating! Could you tell us more directly how your research is informed by religious studies or intersects with the study of religion as a field?
Patrick: Sure. The language of UFOs and the whole framework within which we talk about this kind of modern UFO phenomenon is in some ways an obscuration of the fact that these things have been happening for thousands of years. And we’re actually talking about a pattern of phenomena that is very ancient and that has deep roots that extend into the history of religions and folklore and magic and mythology. That’s not to say that all religion is really just encounters with aliens. That’s kind of the popular ancient alien narrative that is oversimplifying and isn’t really based on a scholarly understanding of the history of religions. So, it’s important to see that religion is way more complex than a narrative like that suggests. But these encounters, UFO encounters, if we want to think of it that way, are very much a part of the history of religions. I think we can say that in some ways we’re not talking about two separate phenomena. We’re talking about one continuous manifestation that we’ve come to think of in different ways of modern technology and science.
Shurouq: And what does receiving Iles Award mean for your research? And how will it advance it research? What do you think you’ll use the grant towards?
Patrick: It’s an extremely supportive grant to receive. It’s very meaningful also because of its connection to Dr. Sarah Iles Johnston and her family and her parents. So it’s very meaningful in that way to receive that award. And in this case it will help me to connect with the living communities that are engaged in myth-making practices now, today, largely born of their own experiences. There’s a whole kind of hidden world of science, technology, political advocacy, but most of all just ordinary people living their lives in the midst of encounters with the strange and profound that aren’t always recognized. There’s a long history of meeting those experiences with ridicule and stigmatization and rejecting them, denying them. So, this summer I’m planning to attend a couple conferences, and the grant is going to help me to do that. And those are conferences where experiencers get together to share their stories and to learn from each other and really to cope with the challenges of living with these more-than-human forces.
Shurouq: Amazing! Congratulations again on winning the award!