Cassandra Vieten is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, a psychologist, and a researcher who joined the Clarke Center team in 2020. She is also Director of the Center for Mindfulness at UC San Diego and co-founder and clinical psychology director at the Center for Psychedelic Research. She is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019. Her research has focused on consciousness and worldview, spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. completed her research training in behavioral genetics at UC San Francisco, and was a scientist at California Pacific Medical Center for over a decade. She has authored four books, including Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel and Live with the Science of Imagination. She has published numerous articles in scientific journals and is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop leader. More here.
Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.
Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.
The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.
Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.
Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.
The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.
Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.
The science of imagination needs a guide for the future.
The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination.
Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.
The science of imagination needs
a guide for the future.
The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination.
The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet.
Imagination discovers
new possibilities within the impossible.
Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth – to envision and build a more equitable an sustainable world.
