CSWR Psychedelic Intersections 2025 Call for Papers

Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions is excited to announce the third annual Psychedelic Intersections conference. This one-day academic conference will be held at Harvard University on February 15, 2025.

The conference brings together interdisciplinary scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss the intersection of psychedelics and spirituality. Following last year’s popular Psychedelic Intersections: Cross Cultural Manifestations of the Sacred conference, the 2025 conference features three research tracks:

· Psychedelic Chaplaincy

· Indigenous Plant Medicine Traditions

· Psychedelic Aesthetics and the Transcendent

The conference asks: How can religious studies and spiritual care inform the Psychedelic “Renaissance”? What are the best practices for psychedelic chaplaincy? How can spiritual care be best integrated into psychedelic use in recreational and religious settings? How can psychedelic studies build interdisciplinary and collaborative community across traditions, cultures, and modalities? In what ways do the histories and the presents of Indigenous traditions present new relationships with the more-than-human world? Is aesthetics uniquely suited to understand and convey the activity of a psychedelic body? How can art foster and induce transcendent experiences? How can art be used in psychedelic settings as a means of integration?

We are calling for papers from scholars and/or practitioners whose work speaks to one or more of the panel areas. See below for submission details.

Submission Guidelines:

To support our mission of interdisciplinary and intersectional dialogue, we welcome abstracts from scholars of diverse fields, backgrounds, and career stages. We especially encourage applications from scholars representing religious studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, other fields in the humanities and social sciences, and those whose work meaningfully intersects with the humanities.

Scholars and practitioners working with or representing underrepresented peoples and traditions are encouraged to submit. In limited cases, translation services may be available, though we request that abstracts be submitted in English. We request that all abstracts adhere to academic standards of argumentation and support.

Abstracts should be between 250-300 words. Paper presentations will be 20 minutes. Abstracts should be emailed to cswr@hds.harvard.edu and must include the following:

· Title of the presentation

· Presenter(s) name, affiliation, and contact information

· Brief biography (50-100 words)

· Indication of the preferred presentation format (paper or panel)

· Focus area(s):

o Psychedelic Chaplaincy

o Indigenous Plant Medicine Traditions

o Psychedelic Aesthetics and the Transcendent

· A concise summary of the research question, methodology, and main findings

Full papers should be up to 2,000 words in length.

Important Dates:

Submission Deadline: November 1, 2024

Notification of Acceptance: December 20, 2024

Conference Date: Saturday, February 15, 2025

Conference Papers Due (Written Draft for Publication): Saturday, February 22, 2025

Edited Volume: We will be pursuing publication of an edited volume in digital, open-access format, based on this conference. We request that submissions do not include work that has already been published or accepted for publication elsewhere.

Funding: An honorarium will be provided to speakers whose papers are selected and who submit workable drafts for the anthology February 22, 2025.

Learn more here.