Upcoming Events
💡 Honest Science Workshop — CSCSC
September 20 – 27, 2026 in French Pyrenees
A week-long gathering for researchers who take first-person inquiry seriously as scientific method — integrating contemplative practice, authentic dialogue, and rigorous formal science.
Most research uses only third-person methods. This workshop uses all three: first-person (contemplative investigation of experience), second-person (authentic exchange that surfaces hidden assumptions), and third-person (complexity science, modeling, data). We examine the worldview assumptions shaping our science — what we actually believe about consciousness, agency, and emergence — before those assumptions become invisible constraints.
Participants give research talks (the real version, not the conference version), collectively map the research landscape at the intersection of complexity science and contemplative studies, and build high-trust collaborations. Planned shared outputs include a collectively authored field-mapping document.
For researchers whose work grapples with questions of agency, emergence, consciousness, or what it means to be a complex system studying complex systems.
This workshop is immediately followed by the Work Alive Retreat (information below) at INTP in the French Pyrenees. €200 off for the combined two weeks. 10–20 participants each.
Click here to learn more about CSCSC.
Deadline: Early bird registration closes May 31, 2026
💡 Work Alive Retreat – CSCSC
September 27 – October 4, 2026 in French Pyrenees
Most of us learned, somewhere along the way, that work isn’t supposed to feel good now — it pays off later. So we tolerate. Meanwhile the actual hours of actual lives pass in a kind of half-sleep. This retreat is about discovering that “later” can be now, right in the middle of work itself.
Bring your actual project — the paper, the manuscript, whatever’s alive for you. Work in focused blocks (4–10 hrs/day) alongside honest, interesting people, with contemplative practice woven in lightly: morning movement, evening fires, small-group inquiry that doesn’t give advice but creates space to be seen.
The contemplative insight: the resistance you feel opening a document is the same thing a meditator sits with on the cushion — and responds to the same quality of attention. Your practice doesn’t have to stop when you open the laptop.
Facilitated by Pavel Chvykov (PhD Physics, MIT; complexity scientist; CSCSC co-founder), who works alongside participants on his own projects throughout the week.
This retreat follows immediately after the Honest Science Workshop (information above) at INTP in the French Pyrenees. €200 off for the combined two weeks. 10–20 participants each.
Click here to learn more about CSCSC.
Deadline: Early bird registration closes May 31, 2026.
💬7th Models of Consciousness Conference – Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science
October 12th – October 16th, 2026 at University of Copenhagen, Denmark
By the kind invitation of the Centre for the Philosophy of AI, Centre for Subjectivity Research, Department of Computer Science and the Department of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, we, the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science, and all of our organising and supporting institutions, are delighted to announce the seventh Models of Consciousness conference (MoC7) 2026.
This year we have a unique and diverse program, offering:
- An exciting group of keynote speakers
- A rich social program to maximise interactions and collaborations, including a visit to the acclaimed Louisiana Museum.
- An opportunity to experience the Hygge Danish culture in the world’s most liveable city.
- Affordable registration fees, parallel sessions and poster sessions to showcase your research.
- A unique bottom-up transdisciplinary moderation to shape the future of the field, an experiment that, if successful, will become the first collective paper of this magnitude!
- Check the website for more information, and join us to make history as a community!
Deadlines:
- Talk Application Deadline: July 5, 2026
- Early Bird Registration Deadline: May 31, 2026
- Regular Registration Deadline: August 31, 2026
For news and deadlines updates, follow us on our media platforms: LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky.
Previous Events
💡Buddhist philosophy lecture series in Paris with Dr Marc-Henri Deroche
This March and April, there will be a series of in-person lectures delivered by visiting professor Dr Marc-Henri Deroche in Paris at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE).
This series of lectures on Buddhist philosophy explores the notion of “mindfulness” as an object of interdisciplinary study, structured around four complementary themes. It begins with a rigorous philological analysis of this key Buddhist concept, drawing on the scholastic and contemplative synthesis of the Tibetan and Himalayan traditions. Then turning to a transcultural philosophical reflection on conversion and the techniques of mindfulness, it considers ancient sources and contemporary challenges. This inquiry is further explored through a dialogue at the intersection of the contemplative phenomenology of Buddhist traditions and the empirical study of consciousness by cognitive science. Finally, it concludes by examining mindfulness exercises through the lens of cultural transfer and as techniques of the body and attentional gestures. This synergy between Buddhist philology, comparative philosophy, cognitive science, and the anthropology of technology will ultimately attempt to address, with Simone Weil, the question of mindfulness as a means of emancipation.
💡Cultivating an Enactive Ecology of Learning in 2026 at Paris-Est Créteil University
We are pleased to share more updates from our longstanding collaborators at Paris-Est Créteil University, whose work has been instrumental in establishing the first enactively informed Master’s programmes in language teaching (Languenact), and the arts (Art’Enact) which is now in full swing welcoming 18 new students in its 8th cohort. Their public activities for 2026 have continued to deepen the artistic and phenomenological dimensions of training within an enactive ecology of learning, with a rich series of events.
The next of which is a study day exploring “Énaction et Transdisciplinarité” on 11th April 2026 delving into the enactive approach developed by Francisco Varela, tracing the convergence of various disciplines during the 20th century towards a new understanding of cognition and a redefinition of humanity’s place in the universe.
Previous Events
💬Mindful Researchers: Mindful Presentations
Sun, 30 Nov 2025 · 10–11:30am EST / 4–5:30pm CET / 8:30–10pm IST
The Mindful Researchers are organising a new initiative, “Mindful Presentations”. A gathering facilitated by Rocío & Vani, featuring presentations by:
- Marcia Cano — Co-design workshops with children, participation & care
- Monica Spalvieri — Biochemistry, martial arts & Zen; epigenetics and meditation
A space for mindful sharing, deep listening, and community connection. If you’d like to offer a 15-minute presentation next year, feel free to reach out to Mindful Researchers!
☕Mindful Researchers: The Contemplative Café
Thu, 11 Dec 2025 · 11am–12pm EST / 5–6pm CET / 9:30–10:30pm IST
The Mindful Researchers are organising a new initiative, “The Contemplative Café”: a new, relaxed drop-in space hosted by Elaine & Heena. Come as you are, with tea, coffee, lemonade, or water, to connect, reconnect, and chat freely. Please feel free to share The Contemplative Café invitation with your networks and friends!
💡Mind & Life Institute Event: “Bridging Buddhist Wisdom and Modern Science: The Dalai Lama at 90”
Wednesday 10th September, 2025
On September 10th, join our friends at the Mind & Life Institute for “Bridging Buddhist Wisdom and Modern Science: The Dalai Lama at 90.”
Mind & Life President Suzanne Bond will be in conversation with Buddhist scholar, author, and longtime translator for the Dalai Lama, Thupten Jinpa, to honor the Dalai Lama and his profound legacy of bridging science and contemplative wisdom. The program will feature inspiring stories, along with archival images and footage from people and events that shaped the modern mindfulness movement.
💡Upcoming Conference: (Not) Caring to Know: Vice Epistemology meets Situated Affectivity
Wednesday 3rd – Friday 5th September 2025
Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value at the University of Pardubice Pardubice, Czech Republic cordially invites researchers to attend the conference, online or in presence.
Encountering the world is not a dispassionate affair. Our emotions shape and condition how we gain knowledge and understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Our doubts can be laden with fear, our beliefs motivated by anger, our understanding may be tempered with love — more generally, our intellectual activities are molded by our embodied affective states. The virtuous person’s epistemic practices are characterized by the proper manifestation of these states in conjunction with her virtues. However, what role do these states play in the lives of epistemically vicious agents? What role do fear, and anger, but possibly also hope and joy, play in the denial of evidence about climate change? How does hatred for marginalized social groups impact the prejudiced person’s testimonial practices and communicative exchanges, both offline and online? How can shame and envy enable and sustain echo-chambers and online bubbles? Is there any value (epistemic or otherwise) in being indifferent and apathetic rather than ignorant about personal, political, economic and ecological crises? Or are indifference and apathy hindrances to epistemic care? How might epistemic care, participatory sense-making, and relational virtues, once properly cultivated, serve to improve the lives of such inquirers, especially when embedded in vicious epistemic cultures? Why should one be emotionally responsible? How might the cultivation of virtues be conducive to improving our political conditions and fighting epistemic vices? What structural and cultural changes are needed to make these interventions effective?
To address these questions, the present conference fosters a dialogue between scholars from a range of fields like virtue and vice epistemology, social epistemology, feminist and standpoint epistemology, situated affectivity, affect studies, 4E cognition, political philosophy of mind, phenomenology of emotions, environmental ethics, science communication, and more.
This three-day (hybrid) conference will be hosted by the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value at the University of Pardubice, from September 3rd-5th, 2025.
Organisation committee: Assoc Prof Laura Candiotto, Dr Tanuj Raut. PhD Students: Hardy A. Mirza, Jorge Ernesto Arjona Quintero, Lisa Hall, Serhij Kiš.
For questions about the event, please reach out to Lisa Hall (lisa.hall@student.upce.cz)
You can register here.
You can join online here.
