CALL FOR PAPERS

International Interdisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Studies
IICPS 2026 · June 6–7, 2026 · University of Bucharest, Faculty of Philosophy · Hybrid

Consciousness, Phenomenology, and Emerging Paradigms at the Intersection of Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Clinical Research

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About the Conference

The International Interdisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Studies, organized by PhD Student Raluca Bilașco-Rusu and PhD Student Ștefăniță Manea, Doctoral School of Philosophy, the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest (Department of Theoretical Philosophy), brings together philosophers, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and clinical researchers to engage in rigorous academic dialogue on psychedelic substances and their significance for mind, medicine, and culture.

The conference offers a genuinely interdisciplinary space — one in which phenomenological analysis, neurophilosophical modelling, empirical clinical findings, and questions of ethics and policy are held in productive tension. Presentations will span philosophy of mind, phenomenology, psychiatry, cognitive science, neuroscience, anthropology, and the ethics of psychedelic research.

The event will take place on June 6–7, 2026. Regular presentations will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10-minute Q&A sessions. Keynote lectures will be 45 minutes followed by a 15-minute discussion period. The conference will adopt a hybrid format: presenters may choose to participate in person or via live stream, and all sessions will be available to remote attendees.

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Keynote Speakers

Karl Friston · University College London

Dr. Karl Friston is a British neuroscientist and mathematician, Wellcome Principal Research Fellow at University College London’s Institute of Neurology. He holds fellowships from the Royal Society (FRS), the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci), and the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), and is among the most cited neuroscientists in the world, with an h-index exceeding 230. He co-invented Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM), the dominant software for neuroimaging analysis. His central contribution is the Free Energy Principle — a unified mathematical framework proposing that all biological systems minimise „surprise” by updating internal models of the world. From this derives Active Inference, the theory that both perception and action are forms of prediction-fulfillment rather than stimulus-response. In collaboration with Robin Carhart-Harris, he co-authored the REBUS model (2019), which proposes that psychedelics flatten the precision of high-level priors — rigid top-down beliefs — allowing bottom-up signals to dominate, offering a rigorous computational account of ego dissolution and therapeutic change.

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes · University of Exeter

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is a Philosopher of Mind and Metaphysics who specializes in the thought of Whitehead, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Bergson—and in fields pertaining to panpsychism, pantheism, mental causation, and altered states of consciousness. He is a lecturer at The University of Exeter where he is a lead on the new MSc in Psychedelics: Mind, Medicine, and Culture. Peter is co-director of Europe’s largest psychedelics conference, Breaking Convention, and is on the board of breathwork charity Dreamshadow. He is a member of the drugs advisory committee group, DrugScience, he is on the advisory board of the Tyringham Institute, and is on the team of the established UK independent publisher, Psychedelic Press. Peter is the author of Noumenautics (2015), Modes of Sentience (2021), co-editor and contributor of Bloomsbury’s Philosophy and Psychedelics (2022), the TEDx Talker on ‘psychedelics and consciousness’.

David Luke • University of Greenwich

Dr. David Luke is a British psychologist and Associate Professor at the University of Greenwich, Department of Psychology, Social Work and Counselling. He holds a BSc, MSc, and PhD, and has published over 100 papers and book chapters. He is co-founder and Honorary President of Breaking Convention, Europe’s largest academic conference on psychedelic consciousness. His research focuses on the intersection of psychedelic science and parapsychology — systematically investigating anomalous phenomena such as telepathy, precognition, and entity contact that are frequently reported under psychedelics, applying rigorous empirical methodology to experiences typically dismissed by mainstream science. He is particularly known for his work on DMT-induced entity encounters, exploring whether these experiences demand new ontological categories beyond hallucination or archetype. He has conducted field research across multiple countries, including participant-observation in traditional plant medicine ceremonies.
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Invitation to Submit

We invite submissions of original unpublished work from researchers across philosophy, the cognitive and neurosciences, psychiatry, anthropology, and related disciplines. We particularly welcome contributions that engage directly with the guiding questions of the conference and that foster dialogue across disciplinary boundaries.

Submissions from early-career researchers and doctoral candidates are strongly encouraged. The conference is committed to maintaining a genuinely interdisciplinary and intellectually open environment, and welcomes both empirically grounded and purely philosophical contributions.

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Thematic Areas

The conference welcomes contributions across the following domains:

– Philosophy of Mind · Phenomenology · Neurophilosophy
– Altered States of Consciousness · Ego Dissolution
– Transformative Experience (L.A. Paul) · Predictive Processing · Enactive/4E Cognition
– Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy · Philosophy of Psychiatry
– Mystical-Type Experiences · Metaphysical Belief Revision
– Ethics of Psychedelic Research · Informed Consent · Epistemic Justice
– Panpsychism, Idealism, and Cosmopsychist Interpretations of Psychedelic Experience

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Panel Topics & Guiding Questions

Submissions need not address these questions directly, but may find them generative as orienting frameworks:

– What is the ontological and epistemic status of psychedelic-induced experiences? Can they constitute genuine forms of knowledge?
– How do predictive processing and the REBUS model account for the phenomenology of ego dissolution and oceanic boundlessness?
– In what ways do psychedelic experiences qualify as transformative experiences in L.A. Paul’s sense — and what are the implications for rational decision-making?
– What does the entropic brain hypothesis tell us about the relationship between psychedelic states and ordinary waking consciousness?
– How should philosophy of psychiatry respond to emerging evidence on psychedelic-assisted therapy for treatment-resistant conditions?
– What role do cultural, ceremonial, and ritualistic settings play in shaping the phenomenological content of psychedelic experiences?
– Can non-physicalist interpretations of psychedelic states — panpsychism, idealism, cosmopsychism — be defended on philosophical grounds?
– What ethical frameworks should govern research on psychedelic substances, including questions of vulnerability and epistemic justice?
– How do enactive and 4E approaches to cognition illuminate the embodied dimensions of psychedelic phenomenology?

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Submission Guidelines

Abstracts should be submitted in English. Authors are invited to submit an abstract of 400–600 words, excluding references, accompanied by a title, a list of up to five keywords, and the author’s institutional affiliation. Full papers (5,000–8,000 words) may be submitted by authors whose abstracts have been accepted.

All submissions will be subject to double-blind peer review. Please prepare abstracts for anonymous review by removing all identifying information from the document. This information will be written in the body of email. Submissions should be sent in PDF or .docx format via the conference submission platform. Authors may submit to at most one thematic area per submission.

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Contact & Submission

For queries and submissions, please contact the Organising Committee:
confpsych2026@gmail.com

Department of Theoretical Philosophy · Faculty of Philosophy · University of Bucharest
Splaiul Independenței nr. 204, Sector 6, Bucharest, Romania

Organised by Raluca Bilașco-Rusu & Ștefăniță Manea, under the supervision of Acad. Prof. Dr. Mircea Dumitru — Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, 2026.

The event is organised by drd. Sandra Branzaru, drd. Cătălin Teoharie, Doctoral School of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, in collaboration with Alexandra Ciubotaru (resident in Psychiatry, Alexandru Obregia Psychiatry Hospital), Alexandru Bîcu and Olguţa Barizi (alumni Cognitive Science BA, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science). Chairs: David Urzică (Cognitive Science, BA, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science, UB), Elena Luiza Costache (Cognitive Science, BA, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science, UB), Horeanu Ionuţ (Doctoral School of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, UB)

This workshop aims to explore, but it is not limited to, conceptual clarification of psychiatric concepts, especially in light of new approaches in philosophy of mind, such as embodied, situated, extended and enactive cognition, but also predictive processing. We will also explore pluralistic approaches to the nature of psychiatry as a science, as well as ontological, explanatory, and value pluralism. Recent developments in bioethics and applied ethics also call for philosophical refection in regards to equal access to mental healthcare, the autonomy and agency of patients, and decision-making with respect to potential treatment schemas.  AI (artificial intelligence) has also been integrated in mental healthcare, so we are interested in understanding the risks and benefits of their use. On the one hand, they might aid or enhance diagnostic precision, personalized treatment and care option, pre-evaluation of treatment efficacy. On the other hand, this raises challenges such as privacy of highly sensitive patient data or regulatory, policy and standardization issues that arise from the lack of regulation of mental health uses of AI.

The final programme can be found on https://philevents.org/event/show/147329

For registration, face to face or online – in order to receive the zoom connection details, please contact sandra-catalina.branzaru@fpse.unibuc.ro