Two Osher Center Contributors to Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science
The Osher Center is proud to announce that two of its researchers have authored chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, compiled by Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). This groundbreaking book is the first academic handbook exclusively dedicated to the topic of compassion, with insights from top compassion researchers from around the world.
Helen Weng, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Osher Center and at Neuroscape at the UCSF Sandler Neurosciences Center, authored a chapter entitled, “The Impact of Compassion Meditation Training on the Brain and Prosocial Behavior.” Dr. Weng first joined the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine in 2014 as a postdoctoral scholar in the Training in Research in Integrative Medicine (TRIM) fellowship.
“I am very honored to be included as an author in the very first Handbook of Compassion Science, and am excited to see how far the field has come in studying compassion from many perspectives,” said Dr. Weng. “I hope this work generates continued interest in understanding how compassion may help our health and society.”
Eve Ekman, PhD and her father Paul Ekman, PhD co-authored a chapter entitled, “Is Global Compassion Achievable?” Dr. Eve Ekman is a contemplative social scientist and teacher in the field of emotional awareness and burnout prevention, who was also a TRIM fellow at the Osher Center from 2014-2017, and is currently an instructor of Cultivating Emotional Balance, which teaches participants how to live an empathic, compassionate life, while avoiding burnout.
“Writing this chapter for the Handbook alongside an incredible cast of Compassion researchers is a huge honor,” said Dr. Ekman. This book arrives at a meaningful time in which there is a growing interest in the how, why and what of compassion. Writing with my father made the experience all the more engaging. We developed theoretical structures of compassion and empathy to help us answer the question: do we have the capacity to hold compassion for all people?”
