The European Summer Research Institute (ESRI) is an event initiated by Mind & Life Europe bringing together around 140 scientists and practitioners in a unique retreat setting.
ESRI 2027: “Opening in the Midst of Uncertainty: Deepening Connection”
Applications are not yet open for ESRI 2027. Stay tuned!
What is ESRI?
Cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration
The primary aim of ESRI is to further develop and promote the interdisciplinary community of contemplative science in Europe, with a special focus on preparing the next generation of researchers and practitioners in the field and building ‘gentle bridges’ (F. Varela) between an ever-widening array of disciplines. The programme features interdisciplinary scholarly presentations and dialogue, inquiry through first-person experience, active contemplative practice, and ample intergenerational networking opportunities. Scientists, scholars, researchers, educators, clinicians, and professionals working in this field come together as a community to share ideas, knowledge, methodologies, and experiences from their lives and work, in order to bring about concrete advances in the field.
In addition to theoretical exchanges, there is ample space for practice, whether in the form of contemplation, activities in nature, dance, and movement, or artistic co-creations. It is an invaluable opportunity to build life-long connections and friendships with like-minded people, supporting each other’s growth in the direction of caring and awareness.
Attendees of the ESRI are eligible to apply for the European Varela Awards for contemplative research. Click here for more information about the European Varela Awards (EVAs). The application period for the EVA 2025 cycle has recently closed. The EVA 2026 cycle will open in October 2026.
ESRI Thematic Arc 2026-2028: “Opening in the Midst of Uncertainty”
From 2026, we will begin a new three-year thematic arc for our ESRIs. You can read more about this new arc in our concept note below:
Previous ESRIs
ESRI 2026: “Opening in the Midst of Uncertainty: Expanding Time”
Our most recent European Summer Research Institute, “Opening in the Midst of Uncertainty: Expanding Time”, took place from 25th – 29th July 2026 at Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, Austria.
It was very kindly sponsored by the Italian Buddhist Union’s Research Center and the Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, Austria.
It may well be that we have always lived in a world of flux, both socially and metaphysically, and with that, in a radical, irremediable form of uncertainty. But in recent years, it seems we have been made forcibly aware of this transience and the precarity of expectations it entails. The sense of urgency felt by many in these times—made palpable through the cascading effects of the climate catastrophe, the rapid escalation of conflict and polarisation, and the exponential acceleration of new technologies—calls us more than ever to critically reconsider our relationship to time, and our understanding of its multiple scales and rhythms.
At ESRI 2026, we asked ourselves: How does our understanding of time, through different onto-epistemological framings, shape the very realities we are witness to today; and how do these felt realities in turn influence our conceptualisation of time? What would it mean to expand our sense of social and historical time, both in the sense of enlarging it to include a longer arc of history and of acknowledging the radically unfinished and emergent nature of all interactions? What possibilities are there for other ways of experiencing and living time (‘chrono-diversity’) in societies with highly demanding and constricted temporal patterns? What is the ethical potential of embracing more pluralistic ways of organising time?
In alphabetical order, we were delighted to have the following planning committee members for ESRI 2026:
- Dr Raphaële Jeune
- Geshe Thabkhe
- Prof Maria E. Louw
- Maša Rebernik
- Dr Camilo Miguel Signorelli
- Prof Julien Tempone-Wiltshire
- Dr Francesco Tormen
- Prof Marieke van Vugt
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ESRI Thematic Arc 2023-2025 – Caring for Life
2023 marked the first year in a three-year thematic arc, “Caring for Life,” which foregrounded caring as an active, processual, and participative feature of being human in a wildly complex and rapidly evolving ecosystem.
In year 1, “Sentience and Responsibility in Critical Times,” we started by questioning the basic terms of inquiry: What is sentience? How do we understand responsibility in the widest possible sense? How might responsibility at once emerge from sentience and tend toward sentience? What is the place of the human in the ‘more-than-human’ realm, whether understood classically as nature or as the emergent network of artificial intelligence that undergirds our everyday lives? Is it even possible to demarcate today a clear boundary between sentience and non-sentience? Besides several prominent scientists and philosophers, we heard from social scientists, clinicians, educators, environmentalists, AI theorists, legal scholars, and more. We endeavoured to thus build a more nuanced understanding of sentience and its ethical implications in a world that desperately needs our tending.
In year 2, “Living in Groundlessness with Uncertainty”, we interrogated more closely the notion of groundlessness in all its conceptual and existential density, explicitly reflecting on how groundlessness intimately informs our sense of ethics and being-in-the-world.
In year 3, “Down to Earth: Exploring Meaningful Ways of Living, Together”, we braided together the theoretical questions of the two years before with the concrete, ethical dimensions of our everyday lives. We adopted a ‘theor-ethical’ approach, asking questions from the ground up regarding the worlds that we witness, our implications in bringing them forward, and our meaningful and responsible relations to them.
ESRI 2025: “Down to Earth: Exploring Meaningful Ways of Living, Together”
In 2025, coming down to earth, as it were, we began exploring meaningful ways of living together, braiding together the theoretical questions of the two years before with the concrete, ethical dimensions of our everyday lives. Far from creating another duality, the approach was ‘theor-ethical’, asking questions from the ground up, such as: How are we implicated in bringing forth the particular worlds that we are witnessing today? How can we relate meaningfully and responsibly to these worlds? How do our epistemologies shape our ethical stance in the world, and vice versa? How can we address the very real challenges before us in a healthy and participatory way, as an integrated part of caring for life? What sorts of creative and sustainable remedies can we imagine, using the tools from a broad range of disciplines, such as science, philosophy, education, environmental studies, contemplative practice, and the arts? Could conversations among these different disciplines yield more robust and supple ways of responding to the worlds at hand?
As part of our YouTube series featuring conversations and interviews at previous ESRIs and MLE Retreats:
Each morning's panel at the ESRI features a series of interdisciplinary presentations, anchored by moments of dialogue and contemplative practice. The Day 2 Panel at ESRI 2025 was entitled "Thinking and Researching from Where We Stand: Embodiment and Direct Experience in Science-Making" and brought to the fore some questions that are foundational to the enactive approach and neurophenomenological research. Featuring Prof Evan Thompson, Prof John Dunne, Prof Cliff Saron, Dr Hanne De Jaegher, Prof Marieke van Vugt, Dr Catherine Bastien-Ventura, and Dr Raphaële Jeune.
Alongside ESRI 2025, Mind & Life Europe also arranged an in-person MLE Retreat at the same venue, from 23rd – 25th July 2025.
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ESRI 2024: “Living in Groundlessness with Responsibility”
ESRI 2024’s programme invited participants to probe “Living in Groundlessness with Responsibility”. It took place from 4th to 8th August 2024 at the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Pomaia, Italy.
As living beings, we naturally long for a firm ground. We need a certain measure of stability, predictability, and certainty to be able to survive. We may see groundlessness as specific to this time and to our world. But reality is naturally unstable, unpredictable, and uncertain. That is the human condition. This ongoing tension might cause us to give up and succumb to a sense of meaninglessness. Or we might frantically try to deny this groundlessness and hold on to illusory certainties.
Being sentient means being responsible. So the question is: how can we wisely navigate this field of tension? How can we take up responsibility amid this groundlessness? Can we face groundlessness without despair or defeatism? Can we stay clear of ideology and fanaticism? Can this groundlessness in itself become a source of creativity and compassion?
Mind & Life Europe partnered with the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute (ILTK) and the Italian Buddhist Union for the European Summer Research Institute 2024 and the MLE Retreat 2024.
As part of our YouTube series featuring conversations and interviews at previous ESRIs and MLE Retreats:
Two faculty members of ESRI 2024, Prof Jennifer Branlat and Prof Miriam Kyselo, draw upon their research and personal experience to explore enactive sociality, caring practices in academia, and the relational dimension of philosophy and pedagogy.
ESRI 2023: “Sentience and Responsibility in Critical Times”
This year’s programme invited participants to probe “Sentience and Responsibility in Critical Times” through five primordial qualities of being — Equanimity, Joy, Loving-kindness, Care, and Commitment — each of which allowed us to ask questions about where sentience begins and ends, how sentience might enter into right relationship with the ailing (and more-than-human) world, and what ethical frontiers have yet to be considered in a rapidly evolving technocracy. Each day was devoted to one quality, taken up by a dense matrix of different disciplinary perspectives in the morning, and explored through playful and participatory workshops in the afternoon. Relying as much on empirical research as on creative and contemplative practices, the programme helped us all to build a more nuanced and cross-disciplinary understanding of life on this planet.
Mind & Life Europe partnered with the Lama Tzong Khapa Institute (ILTK) and the Italian Buddhist Union for the European Summer Research Institute 2023 and the MLE Retreat.
Conversations at ESRI 2023
Conversation between Prof Jay Garfield & Br Pháp Linh
In this deeply probing conversation, Prof Jay Garfield, distinguished professor of philosophy, logic, and Buddhist studies at Smith College, and Br Pháp Linh, beloved monastic, meditation teacher, and musician in the Plum Village lineage, show us what a dialectics between academic research and contemplative practice might look like in action. Reflecting on the critical times in which we are living, they consider what is necessary to untangle ourselves from our “primal confusion,” as Prof Garfield puts it, and which qualities are most needed to fruitfully engage across different disciplinary conceits — trust, good will, epistemic humility, and the mind of practice. They also discuss the dangers of falling into a form of “naive realism,” as Br Pháp Linh refers to it, mistaking our maps and models of reality, be they narrative, mathematical, or scientific, for reality itself. Ultimately, this allows them to examine the nature of experience itself, through the different lenses of their respective disciplines, and to argue for a more nuanced and non-dual understanding of conventional reality and ultimate reality.
Conversation between Dr Luc Steels & Dr Laura Candiotto
In this deeply compelling conversation, renowned AI scientist Luc Steels and philosopher of emotions Laura Candiotto ask some of the foundational questions underlying the theme of last year’s European Summer Research Institute, “Sentience and Responsibility in Critical Times”: What is (the ground of) sentience? How do we cultivate sentience, if it is an ability or process and not a static property? Does it make sense to speak of AI as sentient? Are emotions and values the very things that make us human? What is it within us that makes ethical know-how possible? What might AI science teach us about the enduring enigmas of the human mind, and about the ground of experience? Taking a cue from Francisco Varela’s “meshwork of selfless selves,” Laura and Luc revisit the different domains, or regions, of the mind (the chemical-hormonal, the cognitive, sapience, consciousness, etc.) in order to shed light on how experience is built from self-organising systems, and these systems are inherently interactive. As Luc reminds us, it is not a top-down situation, but “emergent behaviour that comes from the interactions taking place.” Ultimately, this conversation examines the possible bridges between science and ethics, and between AI technology and the humanities, with the view that AI is a set of tools to revisit some of the fundamental questions about the relation between mind, life, and matter.
Interview with Dr Andreas Weber
In this heartfelt conversation, biologist and philosopher Dr Andreas Weber provides some more personal insight into his presentation at ESRI 2023, “Bodies Are Love Processes.” He walks us through his own definition of love as a practice — not a feeling — and as part of a gift-giving relationship, related to the very notion of autopoiesis, by which an organism participates in a continuous desire to recreate itself from that which is not itself. Ecosystems, too, are love processes, as it turns out, and we can even think of the ‘commons’ as a similar process in our societal life. The conversation ultimately leaves us with Dr Weber’s reflections on sentience, and particularly the ethical dimension of sentience, which was a key theme at ESRI 2023.
Interview with Dr Christopher Timmermann
In this interview with Dr Christopher Timmermann, we get a window on his current thinking about the potential of psychedelics research in relation to the ESRI 2023 theme, “Sentience & Responsibility in Critical Times.” He reflects on how the use of psychedelics can contribute to our understanding of mind as an essential part of nature as well as the development of our sense of responsibility to the wider world. His research, which draws on the neuro-phenomenological paradigm of Francisco Varela and colleagues, takes just as seriously first-person experience as more traditional scientific measures of the brain, and considers the importance of context, community, and integration in taking care of first-person experience. Indeed, as he puts it, “there is an ethical dimension to paying close attention to experience.” Ultimately, the notion of practice is brought to the fore, and Dr Timmermann asks how psychedelics can actually bring about the cultivation of traits, rather than simply a fetishisation of states.