Watch the recording of our lecture by Dr. Daan Oostveen on psychedelic humanities. The video is now available on the APRA YouTube channel. Be sure to check out our previous videos and subscribe to the channel!
Over the past decade, great results have been presented to us for the use of psychedelics in clinical settings. MDMA therapy might offer an amazing cure for PTSD, mushrooms might help against depression, and LSD could alleviate end-of-life anxiety. These results have spawned a “psychedelic renaissance”, which has also gained interest of venture capital and initial public offerings. Psychedelics are rebranded and commodified with promises of improved mental health and better living.
On the other hand, there is also an increased interest in the role psychedelic fungi play in human lives. This presentation will offer a cultural reflection on the so-called “psychedelic renaissance”. From hippies to capitalists, from enthusiasts to critiques, from mystics to therapists, and from micro-dosing to mycology.
Dr. Daan F. Oostveen is a philosopher and a scholar of religion working at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University. He graduated from Ghent University with M.A. degrees in both Philosophy and Comparative Literature. His PhD was awarded by the Faculty of Theology and Religion of VU Amsterdam, with a doctoral dissertation on multiple religious belonging.
For his doctoral research, he spent a year as a research fellow at the People’s University of China in Beijing to study contemporary Chinese religious diversity in 2018. He is a founding member of the New European Humanities in the 21st Century Network, and editor-in-chief of the Oxford-based Wiley journal Future Humanities. His research interests include the new humanities, comparative religion, posthumanism, and psychedelics studies.