Speakers and Chairs
let’s meet our
Speakers
Bill Bengston
Jessica Bockler
Dorothea Fuckert
Les Lancaster
David Lorimer
Grainne McAnallen
Iain McGilchrist
Pascal Michael
Paul Mills
Michael Nahm
Masayuki Ohkado
Evan Premo
Dean Radin
Oliver Robinson
Rupert Sheldrake
Mona Sobhani
Jim Tucker
Marjorie Woollacott
Valerie Reichmann Popowski
Terence
Sexton
Cheyenne Loana Lückemeier
Vasileios Basios
Jeffrey Dunne
Helane Wahbeh
Bill Bengston
William F. Bengston PhD is an emeritus professor of statistics and research methods at St. Joseph’s University in New York, and the past President (2010-2022) of the Society for Scientific Exploration, an international group of scientists who study anomalies. Dr. Bengston has been doing research into anomalous healing for over forty years, and has numerous peer reviewed academic publications. His memoir, The Energy Cure, is published by Sounds True Publishers. He has also lectured widely in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Dr. Bengston’s research has produced the first successful full cures of transplanted mammary cancer and methylcholanthrene induced sarcomas in mice by energy healing techniques that he helped to develop. He has also investigated assorted correlates to healing such as EEG and fMRI entrainment, and geomagnetic micropulsation anomalies in healing space. His current work involves the attempt to reverse engineer healing and reproduce healing without the healer, and to develop therapies that can be scaled. To read more, see bengstonresearch.com.
Jessica Bockler
Dr Jessica Bockler is a theatre practitioner and transpersonal psychologist who works across academic and applied disciplines: from arts and health, to transpersonal and integral theory, to transformative learning, to social change. Jessica is a Founding Director of the Alef Trust and Programme Director for its Master’s pathway. She is Principal Research Lead for Alef Trust’s global Conscious Community initiative which aims to connect, support and resource change makers in their work. Jessica is also a member of the academic advisory board of the Inner Development Goals initiative, and she is a member of the UNDP’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance which advocates for consciousness-raising practices in systems transformation and sustainable development.
Dorothea Fuckert
Dorothea Fuckert, MD, has been practising for four decades near Heidelberg/Germany, as a board-certified family physician and licensed psychotherapist. She is author of SOUL LIGHT. Our Divine Purpose Revealed on 2000 Afterlife Journeys (2022) and numerous papers in international journals; co-author of various books, spiritual teacher and LBL hypnotherapist. Her calling is to ensoul: helping people in unfolding their unique Divine potentials and fulfilling their life purpose. She is assistant teacher, mentor and columnist for the Michael Newton Institute, which offers trainings and talks, publishes books and the regular online journal ‘Stories of the Afterlife’.
Les Lancaster
Prof Les Lancaster is a Founding Director and Dean of the Alef Trust. He is Professor Emeritus of Transpersonal Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, an Honorary Research Fellow in Religions and Theology, University of Manchester, UK, and Associated Distinguished Professor of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, US. He has previously served as Chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, as President of the International Transpersonal Association, and as a Board member of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology. Les’ research interests focus on the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness and the connections between this topic and mysticism, specifically focusing on Kabbalistic Psychology. His published works include The essence of kabbalah and Approaches to consciousness: The marriage of science and mysticism.
David Lorimer
David Lorimer, MA, PGCE, FRSA is a visionary polymath, poet, spiritual activist, writer, lecturer and editor who is a Founder of Character Education Scotland, Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network and former President of Wrekin Trust and the Swedenborg Society. Originally a merchant banker and then a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College, he is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including The Spirit of Science, Thinking beyond the Brain, Science, Consciousness and Ultimate Reality, The Protein Crunch (with Jason Drew), and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson). His most recent books are his essays A Quest for Wisdom and his collection of poems, Better Light a Candle. His early books on death and near-death experiences, Survival? and Resonant Mind, were republished in 2017.
He is a founding member of the International Futures Forum and was editor of its digest, Omnipedia – Thinking for Tomorrow. He was also a Trustee of the St Andrews Prize for the Environment and a Churchill Fellow. His book on the ideas and work of the Prince of Wales – Radical Prince – has been translated into Dutch, Spanish and French. He is the originator of the Inspiring Purpose Values Poster Programmes, which have reached over 300,000 young people. See www.inspiringpurpose.org.uk
Grainne McAnallen
Grainne McAnallen is an Executive Coach and an Advanced Yoga Nidra Instructor. As a coach, she uses a variety of techniques, including Yoga Nidra, to enable clients to access both left-hemisphere and right-hemisphere capabilities so that they effectively use a “different mind to solve the problem than the mind that created it” as per Albert Einstein. Prior to qualifying as a coach, she worked in the hedge fund business in New York and London, analysing and investing in hedge funds on behalf of institutional investors. She has a Bachelor of Civil Law from University College Dublin, Ireland, is a Chartered Financial Analyst and has many qualifications in the field of coaching, yoga and systemic constellations.
Iain McGilchrist
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Consultant Emeritus of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, a former research Fellow in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore, and a former Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He now lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of North West Scotland, where he continues to write, and lectures worldwide.
His books include Against Criticism (Faber), The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale UP), The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning; Why Are We So Unhappy? (Yale UP), and Ways of Attending (Routledge).
His latest publication is the two-volume work, The Matter with Things which was published in November 2021 by Perspectiva Press. This is a sustained critique of reductive materialism, and concerns such questions as ‘Who are we? What is the world? What is the nature of time and space? What do we mean by purpose, value and the divine? And how do we most reliably set about finding out?’ He has also been commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a book of reflections on the humanities and sciences; and plans to write a critique of contemporary society and culture from the standpoint of neuropsychology, as well as a study of what is revealed by the paintings of subjects with psychotic illnesses. He is an Honorary Member of the SMN.
Pascal Michael
Pascal Michael BSc, MSc completed his PhD in Psychology at the University of Greenwich on a comparative analysis of the neurophenomenology of both DMT (and analogous) experiences and the near-death experience (NDE). He is currently a lecturer there, teaching and researching on his particular interests of the phenomenology, neuroscience and implications of psychedelics, survival research such as NDEs and mediumship, alien abduction/UFOlogy, and their intersections. He has presented at Breaking Conventions and for the Tyringham Initiative, and published in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology. He is co-leader of the ALEF Trust’s certificate in Psychedelics, ASCs and Transpersonal Psychology, and the 2020 recipient of the Schmeidler Outstanding Student Award.
Paul Mills
Paul J. Mills PhD is Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health and Director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health. The Center is advancing research excellence in integrative health to transform how medicine is practiced, supporting education and mentorship in integrative health research for students as well as healthcare professionals, and helping to guide the creation of new models of clinical care, combining the best of traditional medicine and evidence-based integrative therapies. The overarching goal is to advance the investigation of integrative health approaches and the integration of effective approaches in health care.?
He is also Chief of the UC San Diego Behavioral Medicine Division, Director of the UC San Diego Clinical Research Biomarker Laboratory, and Co-director of the UC San Diego Clinical and Translational Research Institute’s Translational Research Technology (TRT) Program. He is currently serving as Director of Research for the Chopra Foundation.
He has expertise in Integrative Medicine, Traditional Medical systems, and psychoneuroimmune processes in wellness and disease, publishing numerous manuscripts and book chapters on these topics. He is the author of The Spiritual Lives of Scientists.
Masayuki Ohkado
Prof Masayuki Ohkado, trained in linguistics within the framework of generative grammar, has been working on past-life experiences with special focus on children claiming to have past-life and other prenatal memories, near-death experiences, and related phenomena, especially those occurring in Japan. He is currently affiliated with Chubu University (School of General Education, and Graduate School of Global Humanics) as a professor and with the University of Virginia (Division of Perceptual Studies) as an external researcher.
Michael Nahm
Michael Nahm is a biologist and research associate at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP) in Freiburg, Germany. His research interests focus on riddles of biology and the mind. These include terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, other unusual brain-related findings, and reincarnation cases. Nahm has published four books and numerous scientific articles on these matters.
Oliver Robinson
Dr Oliver Robinson is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, author of Paths Between Head and Heart: The harmonies of science and spirituality. He is also an aspiring piano composer. He lives with his wife and daughter in London. His personal website is www.oliverrobinson.info
Evan Premo
Composer / Musician Evan Premo creates musical experiences for exploring the intersection of consciousness, spirituality, and artistic expression. His cutting-edge work traverses the boundaries of knowing through the language of sound. Evan has extensive experience engaging audiences of all ages in music as an educational and connective tool, and has performed at Carnegie Hall and on National Public Radio’s Performance Today as well as many other stages globally. Evan’s compositions have been commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Chamber Orchestra, The Pine Mountain Music Festival, and Aizuri Quartet, among others. Evan is the Founder and co-Artistic Director of Scrag Mountain Music and the genre-bending Beethoven and Banjos festival. When Evan’s not performing and composing, he may be found communing with nature or tinkering with his latest homemade instrument.
Dean Radin
Dean Radin PhD is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), Associated Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and chairman and cofounder of the genetic neuroengineering company, Cognigenics. He earned an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining the IONS research staff in 2001, Radin worked at AT&T Bell Labs, Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, and SRI International. He has given over 700 talks and interviews worldwide, and he is author or co-author of some 300 scientific and popular articles, four dozen book chapters, and nine books, four of which have been translated into 15 foreign languages, including Real Magic (2018).
Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake PhD is a biologist and author of more than 90 scientific papers and 9 books, and the co-author of 6 books. His books have been published in 28 languages. He was among the top 100 Global Thought Leaders for 2013, as ranked by the Duttweiler Institute, Zurich, Switzerland’s leading think tank. On ResearchGate, the largest scientific and academic online network, his RG score of 34.4 puts him among the top 7.5% of researchers, based on citations of his peer-reviewed publications. For ten years running he has been recognized as one of the ‘most spiritually influential living people in the world‘ by Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine. His work has been featured in many magazines, newspapers and broadcast media, including New Scientist, The Guardian, Discover magazine, The Spectator, The Washington Post, Die Zeit and on BBC radio and television.
Since 1985, he has taught every year on courses at Schumacher College, in Devon, England, and has been part of the faculty for the MSc in Holistic Science programme since its inception in 1998. In 2000, he was the Steinbach Scholar in Residence at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. From 2003-2011, Visiting Professor and Academic Director of the Holistic Thinking Program at the Graduate Institute, Connecticut, USA. In 2005, Visiting Professor of Evolutionary Science at the Wisdom University, Oakland, California. From 2005-2010 he was the Director of the Perrott-Warrick Project, funded from Trinity College, Cambridge University. He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, a Fellow of Schumacher College in Devon, England, and a Fellow of the Temenos Academy, London. He is an Honorary Member of the SMN.
Mona Sobhani
Mona Sobhani, PhD is a cognitive neuroscientist, author, and entrepreneur. A former research scientist at the University of Southern California, she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project. She is the author of Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist’s Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe (Park City Press/Inner Traditions), which details her transformation from a diehard scientific materialist to an open-minded spiritual seeker. In the Brave New World of Psychedelic Science substack, she writes about the psychedelic renaissance, altered states of consciousness, and the transpersonal. She is co-founder of Exploring Consciousness, a community of curious scientists who are seeking to understand consciousness, spirituality, and the nature of our reality. www.monasobhaniphd.com
Jim Tucker
Jim B. Tucker, M.D. is a child psychiatrist and the Bonner-Lowry Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He is Director of the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies, where he is continuing the work of Ian Stevenson on children who report memories of previous lives. He is the author of two books that together have been translated into twenty languages, Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives (2005) and Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives (2013), a New York Times bestseller. He has published numerous papers in scientific journals and given talks to both scientific and general audiences.
Marjorie Woollacott
Marjorie Woollacott PhD is an Emeritus Professor of Human Physiology, and member of the Institute of Neuroscience, at the University of Oregon. She was chair of the Human Physiology Department for seven years. In addition to teaching courses on neuroscience and rehabilitation, she taught courses on complementary and alternative medicine and meditation. She is Research Director for the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and is President of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (AAPS She was also a research professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Umea in Umea, Sweden, and in the National Center for Scientific Research in Marseille, France.
Marjorie has received over 7.2 million dollars in research funding for her research in child development, aging, rehabilitation medicine and most recently, meditation. She has published more than 200 scientific articles and written or co-edited eight books. Her latest book, Infinite Awareness (2015) (winner of eight awards, including the 2017 Parapsychological Association Book Award, Eric Hoffer Book Award and the Nautilus Book Award) her research as a neuroscientist with her self-revelations about the mind’s spiritual power. Between the scientific and spiritual worlds, she breaks open the definition of human consciousness to investigate the existence of a non-physical and infinitely powerful mind. She is Co-Chair of the Galileo Commission, co-editor of Spiritual Awakenings and an Honorary Member of the SMN.
Valerie Reichmann Popowski
Valerie Reichmann Popowski, MSc: Valerie is a 48-year-old Belgian woman who lives in Israel since 2013. She works as a psychotherapist in private practice. In parallel she facilitates group therapies in several institutions. Drawing from her training in transpersonal psychology, expressive arts therapies, psychodrama, and dream work, she helps clients expand their states of consciousness and tap into their inner wisdom.
Terence Sexton
Terence Sexton, BSc, MSc, MBA: Terence works Business Psychologist profiling, coaching and developing corporate leaders and changemakers. He has long had an interest in consciousness and has concluded that, as a society, we still have the consciousness to create and maintain an industrial revolution rather than deal with its aftermath. Terence has explored this conclusion in his book – ‘Consciousness Beyond Consumerism: A Psychological Path to Sustainability’. He is now studying for a PhD with the Alef Trust researching how changemakers develop their consciousness.
Cheyenne Loana Lückemeier
Cheyenne Loana Lückemeier, BSc, MSc: Cheyenne has an Honors degree in Psychology and recently completed the Alef Trust’s MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology. She is a trainee therapist in person-centred therapy at Persona Counselling. Her work is guided by her passion for integrating spiritual practice, environmental and social justice. Through her active engagement in the climate justice movement, she has provided wellbeing support directly to activists in a wide range of circumstances, including her role as an Anti-oppression and Wellbeing Coordinator for the COP26 Coalition. Cheyenne is passionate about community building, which is further reflected in her role as a director of a community arts facility.
Vasileios Basios
Dr. Vasileios Basios is a senior researcher at the Physics of Complex Systems Department of the University of Brussels, conducting interdisciplinary research on self-organisation and emergence in complex matter as well as aspects of the foundations of complex systems. During his formative years he worked within the team of Ilya Prigogine at the Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry in Brussels. He is interested on the history of ideas in science and their role in the transformation of science beyond the prevailing mechanistic world-view. He believes that never before has the need for a qualitative change in science been so apparent and pressing and that complexity studies have made such a radical change not just possible but imperative. He is inspired by the prospect of introducing self-reflection into the practice -and the understanding- of science and he aspires to contribute insights from complex systems science that can help put forth a resilient, flexible and robust network of networks comprising of individuals, groups, organizations and research initiatives towards this noble goal.
Jeffrey Dunne
Dr. Jeffrey Dunne holds an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering as well as Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Physics. In addition to a 20+ year career as a researcher in a wide range of traditional fields such as acoustics, signal processing, data fusion, and data science, he has an even more extensive background in consciousness studies. Dr. Dunne is currently president of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories, where he seeks to leverage his storytelling experience as a writer/filmmaker to expand our society’s awareness of and appreciation for the role that consciousness plays in our universe.
Helane Wahbeh
Helané Wahbeh is the Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at Oregon Health & Science University, and president of the Parapsychological Association. Dr. Wahbeh is clinically trained as a naturopathic physician and research trained with a Master of Clinical Research and two post-doctoral research fellowships. She has published on and spoken internationally about her studies on complementary and alternative medicine, mind-body medicine, extended human capacities, stress, posttraumatic stress disorder and their relationships to physiology, health, and healing. Dr. Wahbeh is especially known for her research around — and noetic approach to — channeling.