European Summer Research Institute 2023

Laura Candiotto is Associate Professor in Moral Philosophy at the University of Cagliari (IT) and at the Center for Ethics of the University of Pardubice (CZ). Her main research field is philosophy of emotions, at the crisscross of enactive ethics and social epistemology. She is leading two research projects: (1) “Vicious Epistemic Cultures”, on the ethics of knowledge with a specific focus on emotional friction in revision responsibility; (2) “Loving is Caring”, on Plato’s care of the soul and its contribution to the contemporary ethics of care.

Over the last ten years, she has worked on love, compassion, wonder, grief, and shame, bridging her expertise in the Socratic method of inquiry and the enactive approach to participatory sense-making. She contributed to the epistemology of emotions research by carving out a situated model of epistemic emotions as embedded in dialogical interactions and communities of inquiry. She is now focusing on environmental emotions, especially the intertwining of love, grief and hope in inhabiting a place that is dying and in climate migration. She is very much interested in the potential transformative power of the affective experience under the weight of oppression. As a Tibetan Buddhism practitioner and member of Mind and Life Europe, she has a longstanding interest in the role of emotions in contemplative practices with a focus on embodiment and desire. She edited "The value of emotions for knowledge" (Palgrave 2019), "Emotions in Plato" (Brill 2020), "The Philosophy of Environmental Emotions" (Routledge 2025). By December 2026 "Vice Epistemology and the Philosophy of Emotions" will be out with Routledge. She wrote four monographs in Italian and she is now completing her first monograph in English, titled "Emotional Friction" (forthcoming in 2027).

Websites: www.emotionsfirst.org; https://upce.academia.edu/LauraCandiotto; https://centreforethics.upce.cz/en/doc-laura-candiotto-phd

Jay L. Garfield directs the Buddhist Studies Program and Tibetan Studies in India program at Smith College. He is also visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School, Professor of Philosophy at Melbourne University and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. Academicinfluence.com has identified him as one of the 50 most influential philosophers in the world over the past decade.

Garfield’s research addresses topics in the foundations of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind; metaphysics; the history of modern Indian philosophy; topics in ethics, epistemology and the philosophy of logic; the philosophy of the Scottish enlightenment methodology in cross-cultural interpretation; and topics in Buddhist philosophy, particularly Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. He is the author or editor of over 30 books and over 200 articles, chapters, and reviews.

Garfield’s most recent books are: Getting Over Ourselves: How to be a Person Without a Self (2022), Knowing Illusion: Bringing a Tibetan Debate into Contemporary Discourse (with the Yakherds 2021), Buddhist Ethics: A Philosophical Exploration (2021), ̛What Can’t Be Said: Paradox and Contradiction in East Asian Thought (with Yasuo Deguchi, Graham Priest, and Robert Sharf 2021), The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s Treatise From the Inside Out (OUP 2019), Minds Without Fear: Philosophy in the Indian Renaissance (with Nalini Bhushan, 2017), Dignāga’s Investigation of the Percept: A Philosophical Legacy in India and Tibet (with Douglas Duckworth, David Eckel, John Powers, Yeshes Thabkhas and Sonam Thakchöe, 2016) Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy (2015), Moonpaths: Ethics and Emptiness (with the Cowherds, 2015) and (edited, with Jan Westerhoff), Madhyamaka and Yogācāra: Allies or Rivals? (2015).

Dr. Tirso Gonzales, Sociologist by training (PhD University of Wisconsin, Madison). Postdoctoral studies (UC Davis, UC Berkeley). Former Indigenous Studies professor at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan, Canada. Currently works as a deprofessionalized intellectual, and independent consultant. He is an active member of Universidad del Pacífico´s Ciencia Andina/Andean Science Think-Tank group, Lima, Perú. His work experience as scholar, international consultant and activist has allowed him to work on and with Indigenous Peoples agendas. Former member of the Global International Assessment of Agricultural Science & Technology for Development, IAASTD. He has participated at various Intergovernmental Science-Policy meetings. Currently works on Challenges of Duality and Non-Duality´s Ways of Knowing and Being for “Buen Vivir/Sumaq Kawsay” and for the Intercultural Nurturing/Crianza of the Andean Regions’ Territory”. For the last three years, as a way of “Learning to Unlearn”, he participates regularly in weekly Satsangs (being in the company of truth. Being in the company with the sage). He has a bilingual Youtube channel devoted to NonDuality (https://www.youtube.com/@Tirsogonzales/featured )

Venerable Losang Gendun has dedicated nearly four decades to practicing Buddhism and has served as a Bhikshu in the Tibetan tradition for more than 18 years. Prior to his ordination, he worked in diverse fields such as palliative care, technology, refugee organizations, and commercial management. His extensive training includes ten years of studying Buddhist philosophy and practice in monasteries across France, India, Nepal, and Myanmar. Additionally, he spent over four years in retreat, immersing himself in Tibetan sutra and tantra, as well as the Burmese Theravada Forest Tradition. For the last 15 years, Ven. Gendun has taught worldwide, sharing his knowledge of Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and meditation, as a member of the FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition). Ven. Gendun is also a member of Mind & Life Europe, a multidisciplinary laboratory that brings together researchers and contemplative practitioners to explore the nature of experience. Beyond his Buddhist affiliations, Ven. Gendun serves as an interreligious canon at the Peace Cathedral in Tbilisi, Georgia, and teaches at a Mevlavi Sufi dargah in Istanbul. In 2023, he founded The Buddha Project, which engages in long-term guidance for Buddhist meditators, scientific research, art projects, and intercontemplative social engagement.

Maria Louw is associate professor in anthropology and leader of the Centre for the Study of Ethics and Community at Aarhus University. Her research interests include religion and secularism, ethics, care, spectrality, phenomenology, and imagistic anthropology. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. She is currently working on a book with the working title "Spectral Ethics: Rebuilding Moral Worlds in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan."

Dr. Edel Maex is a psychiatrist and Zen teacher living in Antwerp, Belgium. Teaching mindfulness became his way to integrate his Zen practice and his practice as a psychiatrist. He founded the Stress Clinic at the ZNA Hospital in Antwerp. He is the author of several books (in Dutch) on mindfulness and Buddhism. He is currently translating the Dharma talks he has given over the years into English and publishing them on Substack.

Josipa Mihić is an associate professor at the Department of Behavioral Disorders at the Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb. She is a co-founder of the Laboratory for Prevention Research (PrevLab – https://www.erf.unizg.hr/hr/about-us/organization/institute/prevlab) within which she researches risk behaviors, emotional and social competencies in children and youth, the effect of contemplative education and mindfulness practice on mental health and positive development, and the role of self-compassion and compassion in preventing behavioral problems and promoting mental health. She is a trained Gestalt psychotherapist and a co-founder of a MiniMindfulness learning platform.

Ven. Dr. Carola Roloff (Bhikshuni Jampa Tsedroen) has been a permanent visiting professor for Buddhism and Dialogue in Modern Societies at the Academy of World Religions at the University of Hamburg, Germany since 2018. Becoming a Buddhist nun in 1981 (Bhikshuni ordination in Taiwan in 1985), she has studied Buddhist philosophy and practice as well as Tibetology and Indology with a focus on Buddhist studies (Magistra 2003, doctorate 2009). From 2010 to 2017, Roloff led a DFG research project on the ordination of Buddhist nuns. From 2013 to 2018, she was part of the European research project "Religion and Dialogue in Modern Societies". Her current research focuses on dialogical theology and practice, intra-Buddhist dialogue, and recognition processes of Buddhist minorities in Europe. In addition, she has been an ongoing participant in the in-service course Conflict Counselling and Mediation at the University of Hamburg since the summer semester of 2022. She is particularly interested in Buddhist and interreligious chaplaincy and Buddhist care practice. Website: http://www.carolaroloff.de/

Mark Sedgwick is professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. He was born in London and taught for many years at the American University in Cairo. He is by training a historian, and works especially on Sufism and esotericism, and also on right-wing ideology and extremism. His most recent book is Traditionalism: The Radical Project for Restoring Sacred Order (2023).

Luc Steels is Professor Emeritus in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Brussels (VUB) in Belgium. He studied linguistics and philosophy at the University of Antwerp and computer science and artificial intelligence at MIT (US). He founded and directed the VUB Artificial Intelligence laboratory in Brussels from 1983 and the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris from 1996. From 2011 he was research professor at the Institute for Evolutionary Biology at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. Currently he is scientific director at the Venice International University and senior strategy advisor at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Steels worked in many areas of AI from computational linguistics, expert systems, and knowledge representation to neural networks, cognitive robotics and value-aware AI. He is primarily interested in using AI as a tool to investigate embodied mind, meaning, language and consciousness. In 2022 Steels received the Distinguished Service award of the European AI Research Association, the highest award for AI in Europe. He is currently chair for natural sciences of the Royal Flemish Academy for science and art in Belgium. Luc Steels has also been active in the performing arts as a composer of operas and theatre. His latest opera Fausto (performed in Brussels and Paris) was about transhumanism and the limits and dangers of using AI in attempts to gain immortality.

Christian Suhr is a filmmaker and professor of anthropology at Aarhus University. He is the author and director of the award-winning film and book “Descending with angels” about possession, psychiatry, and Islamic exorcism (MUP 2019, www.descendingwithangels.com). In 2022, he completed the film “Light upon light” in collaboration with the Cairo-based film collective Hassala Films (to be screened at ESRi). Christian Suhr is currently working as the PI of an ERC-STG project entitled “Heart Openings”. The project uses microphenomenology, life story interviews, and audiovisual tools of experiential elicitation to explore the experience and cultivation of love in Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.

Christopher Timmermann (PhD) obtained a BSc in Psychology in Santiago, Chile and an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Bologna in Italy. He is currently a post-doc at Imperial College London at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, where he leads the DMT Research Group, specialized in the potent psychedelics N,N-DMT and 5-MeO-DMT and their effects in the human brain and consciousness. His empirical and theoretical work focuses on the neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, pharmacology, beliefs and ethics of psychedelics, their relationship to consciousness and applications in mental health. His work has been covered in BBC, CBC, Wired, The Times, and The Guardian. He is also the director for the Foundation for the Study of Human Consciousness (EcoH) in Chile.

A New York native, Father Tiso earned a Master of Divinity degree (cum laude)at Harvard University and holds a doctorate from Columbia University and UnionTheological Seminary where his specialization was Buddhist studies. His teaching interests include Christian theology, history of religions, spirituality, ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. Father Francis V. Tiso served the US Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2004 to 2009 as liaison to Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Sikhs, and Traditional religions as well as the Reformed confessions. Father Tiso is a priest of the Diocese of Isernia-Venafro, Italy, where he is Diocesan Delegate for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs. He was recently elected to the Board of Directors of Mind and Life Europe, which promotes research in neuroscience, philosophy, and contemplative traditions.

Martijn van Beek is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and affiliated with the Interacting Minds Centre, both at Aarhus University, Denmark. Having worked and conducted research for many years on politics and development in Ladakh and elsewhere in the Himalayan region, for the past two decades his research has increasingly focused on the meeting ground between contemplative traditions, especially Buddhism, consciousness research and modernity. His research seeks to contribute to refining our understanding and the significance of emergent forms of contemplative ways of living for people and for the planet. He is also engaged in research on the (micro-)phenomenology of contemplative practice and experience. Martijn teaches sustainable ways of living and contemplative life in context, in theory and in practice at Aarhus University and elsewhere. He lives at Vaekstcenter, a contemplative community in Denmark.

Marieke van Vugt is an associate professor at the Bernoulli Institute of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Groningen (Netherlands). The research in Prof van Vugt's lab focuses on how, when and why we mind-wander, and what the fundamental cognitive operations are that underlie meditation and mindfulness. Most recently, she started to investigate how analytical meditation practised by Tibetan monks and nuns affects cognition and emotion. She addresses these questions using a combination of computational modelling, neuroscience, and experimental psychology tools. She very much enjoys projects where science, art (particularly classical ballet), and contemplation meet.

Amy Cohen Varela is Chairperson of the Mind & Life Europe Board and involved with Mind and Life since its inception. She is also a clinical psychologist specialized in psychodynamic therapy and philosophy. Amy studied comparative literature at Brown and Columbia Universities before moving to Paris in the early '80s, where she received her degree in clinical psychology at the University of Paris 7, with a specialty in psychodynamic theory and practice, and in parallel, completed psychoanalytic training.

Lieselotte is Principal Investigator of a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, awarded in 2018, titled ‘RIVERS – Water/Human Rights Beyond the Human? Indigenous Water Ontologies, Plurilegal Encounters and Interlegal Translation,’ addressing research contexts in Nepal, Guatemala, Colombia and in the UN human rights system. She is developing this six-year project, till 2025, with an international and interdisciplinary team at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain. She is Belgian-Flemish anthropologist with a PhD in Law (Ghent University, 2011) and has a first academic degree in Criminology. Since her master’s thesis (2002), she has been collaborating with Indigenous peoples in Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador and Colombia in diverse academic, policy and activist spaces. In the context of her PhD research (2006-2010), she embarked on a long-term collaborative ethnographic engagement of almost two years learning about Indigenous norms and practices of justice, reparation, reconciliation and memory with Maya Q’eqchi’ victims and perpetrators. She learned that what lawyers call ‘human rights violations’ for the indigenous Q’eqchi’ are not limited to human beings. Prior to her ERC Grant, she was a post-doctoral Marie Curie fellow at the University of Coimbra, Portugal (2016-2018) and a Human Rights Officer at the Office of United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights in Ecuador (2010-2013) where she was responsible for the areas of collective rights and transitional justice. Lieselotte subscribes the need talk about our epistemological resistances and racism, about the impact and limits of modernity, about the coloniality of power and legal coloniality and to calls for a decolonial academia, which should not be violent but should rather seek healing and promote care. Recently she co-wrote with Catarina Laranjeiro (Portuguese) and Miye Nadia Tom (Indigenous Native American) “The Wall Spoke When No One Else Would: Auto-Ethnographic Notes on Sexual-Power Gatekeeping within Avant-Garde Academia,” in Sexual Misconduct in Academia: Informing an Ethics of Care in the University, ed. Pritchard E. and Edwards D. (London: Routledge, 2023). Website: www.rivers-ercproject.eu

Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher and nature writer. He focuses on a re-evaluation of our understanding of the living. He proposes to view – and treat – all organisms as subjects and hence the biosphere as a meaning-creating and poetic reality. Andreas teaches at the University of the Arts, Berlin and at Bard College Berlin. He is Visiting Professor at the UNISG, Pollenzo, Italy. He contributes to major German newspapers and magazines and has published more than a dozen books, in English language most recently Enlivenment. A Poetics for the Anthropocene, MIT Press, 2019 and Sharing Life. The Ecopolitics of Reciprocity, Boell Foundation, 2020.

Photo credit: Annett Meltzer

Valentine Goblet d’Alviella is the founder of a yoga & meditation shala “shanti home” in Brussels. She is a certified yoga and meditation teacher and energetic healer with a mission to serve and host retreats/circles for reconnection to our true nature and to Earth. She has followed and supported the work of Mind & Life Europe since its establishment.