January 9th – April 5th 2024, 10:30am-12pm PST/1:30pm-3pm EST

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Price $950 USD

Price $480 for CE credits
CE Credits Offered: 24 total

Scholarship Application

In the midst of the current “renaissance” in psychedelic research, it is increasingly recognized that there are a wide range of methodological and ethical issues facing the field. Beyond purely methodological questions, there are also critical questions to be asked about how, where and why particular knowledge about psychedelics is produced. As psychedelics continue to enter mainstream society, it is important to consider what perspectives, questions, methods, and narratives are privileged and which are marginalized. For instance, how are certain variables selected in trials? How much value is assigned to particular forms of subjective experience, or is this valued at all? How does knowledge production differ between the Global North and Global South? How are Indigenous perspectives incorporated into psychedelic research? This course will examine a wide range of critical issues and perspectives in psychedelic science, equipping students with a broader and more integrated understanding of how research is conducted across a variety of settings, its limitations, and how these may be overcome in the future.

Student Learning Objectives

At the end of the program, participants will be better able to…

1. Explain how historical, political, and economic factors inform psychedelic research design
2. Discuss the role of the entourage effect in the therapeutic use of psychedelics
3. List which measures are commonly used in psychedelic research
4. Describe which biases affect the choice of measures in psychedelic research
5. Compare the nuances of how clinical trials with psychedelics are designed and conducted in a variety of settings
6. Describe a range of methodological and ethical questions inherent in psychedelic research
7. Explain the complex history of psychedelics and religion
8. Discuss how problematic or out-of-date theories of religion have been mobilized with the narratives of psychedelic medicine
9. Analyze different types of knowledge production and ways of knowing
10. Discuss how knowledge can be co created with other-than-human beings
11. Discuss the perceptions of Indigenous people in modern and historical contexts
12. Compare modern and historical uses of entheogenic medicines in Indigenous communities
13. Explain how knowledge production differs between Western and Indigenous worldviews
14. Analyze different types of Indigenous knowledge production and ways of knowing
15. Compare how knowledge production differs between the Global North and South
16. Assess the impact of a neuro-centric approach for clinical practice, research, and psychedelic culture
17. Analyze the Brazilian social context and how it influences the production of knowledge in the psychedelic field
18. Discuss how this science developed in the country, influenced by the science produced in the Global North but also by the Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cults, may show different paths for the integration of psychedelics in the Western culture
19. Compare the contribution that a neurophenomenological approach has for psychedelic research and clinical practice, as opposed to a neuro-centric approach
20. Revise and discuss past and present anthropological, clinical, and interdisciplinary psychedelic research in Mexico
21. Discuss research that has been undertaken in Uruguay the last decade and the emergence of Arche, an interdisciplinary research group engaged in the development of a scientific research agenda around psychedelics
22. Analyze the specifics of Uruguay in the global scenario of the psychedelic field

Information on Continuing Education Credits for Health Professionals

• CE credits for psychologists are provided by the Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA) which is co-sponsoring this program. The Spiritual Competency Academy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Spiritual Competency Academy maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 
• The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts CE credits for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association. 
• LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFTs, and other mental health professionals from states other than California need to check with their state licensing board as to whether or not they accept programs offered by approved sponsors of CE by the American Psychological Association. 
• SCA is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN Provider CEP16887) for licensed nurses in California. RNs must retain their certificate of attendance for 4 years after the course concludes. 
• For questions about receiving your Certificate of Attendance, contact [email protected] 
• For questions about CE, contact Spiritual Competency Academy at [email protected]. 

CE Credit Requirements

• Student must be in attendance with their camera on for the entirety of the class session 
• Student must be actively participating in the class session (asking questions, contributing to discussion, etc.) 
• Student must fill out an evaluation and assessment form at the end of the course, which will be provided by Chacruna 
• Collective CE credits will be awarded at the end of the course given that all of the above requirements are met 

*please note that you must purchase a ticket for CE credits on Eventbrite in order to receive CE credits 

*please note that if you miss a class, you will not be awarded any CE credits for the entire course and cannot be refunded for the CE cost – you must attend all classes in order to receive CE credits

*please note that the first and last class do not count towards CE credits 

Chacruna Certificate Requirements

At the end of the course, students will have the option to receive a certificate from Chacruna for the completion of this course. In order to receive this certificate, students must complete one of the following options: 

A. Submit a final individual paper of 1,800 to 2,000 words, following Chacruna’s Chronicles Guidelines (the best papers will be selected to be published on the Chacruna site) *please note that the 2,000 word count should include footnotes and references; papers that go beyond 2,000 total words will not be accepted.

B. Submit a final group paper consisting of 2,000 words per person (i.e. if there are two people writing the paper, it should be a total of 4,000 words; if there are three people writing the paper, it should be a total of 6,000 words) *please note that the 2,000 word count per person should include footnotes and references; papers that go beyond 2,000 total words will not be accepted.

C. Submit a paper with internal reflection of what you have learned throughout this course 

D. Pitch another specific proposal to submit (i.e. mini-documentary, video lecture, creation of a podcast.) 

E. Students will have the option to do an art project related to the contents of the course 

F. Students will have the option to conduct a “Family History.” This would consist of the student interviewing their family members to contextualize their life and experience, to understand their roots, and also talk about their local community/ lands/ social environment where they came from and/or are located 

*Students will also have the option to opt out of receiving the certificate 

*The project submitted must be unique and created specifically for the course – you cannot submit a project that you created previously or submitted elsewhere

Class Recordings and Lecture Slides Policy

Recordings of the lectures will be sent to the students a week before the class is scheduled to take place.

Lecture slides from the classes may be provided to the students at each professor’s discretion. We encourage everyone to come to each class in-person and on time as we cannot guarantee providing these resources in all circumstances.

You can find more information to Frequently Asked Questions here.

Course Structure

• Students will watch the lecture on their own time
• There will be a live 1.5 hour discussion on Zoom with the professor the following week

Refund Policy click here

Classes

Click on the class to read the description

Professors

Jordan Sloshower, MD, MSc is a psychiatrist, researcher, and educator whose work focuses on therapeutic applications of psychedelic medicines, and in particular, how these novel treatments can be delivered in a manner that promotes holistic healing and social justice. He is a faculty member in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, where he served as an investigator and therapist in several clinical trials of psilocybin-assisted therapy. Jordan is a clinical investigator in MAPS’ Expanded Access Program for MDMA-assisted therapy of PTSD and a lead trainer with Usona Institute’s psilocybin facilitator training program. Reflecting his commitment to ethical stewardship of psychedelic medicines, Jordan was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the American Psychedelic Practitioners Association and serves as a member of Chacruna Institute’s Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants. His interdisciplinary perspective is informed by prior training in medical anthropology and global health, and deep interests in ceremonial uses of plant medicines, Buddhist philosophy, and integrative approaches to wellness.

Leor Roseman is a Senior Lecturer and Psychedelic researcher at the University of Exeter. He has previously worked at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, under the mentorship of Prof. Robin Carhart-Harris and Prof. David Nutt, supporting the foundational work of a remerging research field. His interdisciplinary research covers neuroscience, psychology, phenomenology, anthropology and conflict resolution, using various research methods such as fMRI, quantitative, qualitative, microphenomenology, ethnographic, and participatory research. Currently, Leor is investigating relational processes and group dynamics in psychedelic rituals. He is interested in how psychedelics enhance connectedness, group bonding (communitas), and sociality and can serve as a social cure. Furthermore, together with Palestinian and Israeli activists and researchers, he is developing a praxis of research & action which utilizes the potential of psychedelics for peacebuilding, liberation and justice. They hope to create a participatory approach that focuses on personal and societal healing and considers action and healing intertwined.

Anna (Anya) Ermakova has a motley background and broad research interests combining nature conservation, ethnobotany, neuroscience and psychiatry, interweaving and connecting these diverse paths through psychedelic science. Anya worked at the forefront of psychedelic research as a science officer at the Beckley Foundation, and has provided psychedelic welfare and harm reduction services with PsycareUK and Zendo. Deep love for nature and wildlife has motivated Anya to study biology at the University of Edinburgh, while a quest to understand altered states of consciousness has prompted her to specialise in neuroscience and later continued during her PhD in psychiatry at Cambridge, where she investigated the origins of psychosis. She then worked for the NHS, developing and trialing a new psychosocial intervention for psychosis. After a brief stint as a clinical trial manager, she had decided to pursue her passion for nature, by studying Conservation Science at Imperial College London, where she researched peyote ecology in Texas, USA. Anya is working as a research consultant in London, is a member of the Board of Directors of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines, and member of Chacruna’s Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants. She is also board member of the Cactus Conservation Institute.

Dr. Erika Dyck is a Professor and a Canada Research Chair in the History of Health & Social Justice. She is the author of several books, including: Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from Clinic to Campus (Johns Hopkins, 2008; University of Manitoba Press, 2011); Facing Eugenics: Reproduction, Sterilization and the Politics of Choice (University of Toronto, 2013), which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s award for Canadian non-fiction; Managing Madness: the Weyburn Mental Hospital and the Transformation of Psychiatric Care in Canada (University of Manitoba Press, 2017), which won the Canadian Historical Association Prize for best book in Prairie History; and with Maureen Lux, Challenging Choices: Canada’s Population control in the 1970s (McGill-Queens University Press, 2020).  She is also the co-editor of Psychedelic Prophets: The Letters of Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond (2018); and A Culture’s Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote (2016). Erika is the co-editor of the Canadian Bulletin for Medical History/Bulletin canadien d’histoire de la medicine and the co-editor of a new book series on the global history of alcohol and drugs, called Intoxicating Histories. Erika is member of Chacruna’s Board of Directors and Associate Director of Chacruna in Canada.

Dr. J. Christian Greer is a scholar of Religious Studies with a special focus on esotericism. In addition to earning a MDiv at Harvard Divinity School, he received his MA and PhD (cum laude) in Western esotericism from the History of Hermetic Philosophy department at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). His research addresses Popular Culture & Religion, Radical Politics & Religious Activism, Ecological Spiritualities, and Drugs & Religion. His forthcoming book, Angelheaded Hipsters: Psychedelic Militancy in Nineteen Eighties North America (Oxford University Press), analyzes the growth, diversification, and expansion of psychedelic culture within fanzine networks in the late Cold War era. In addition to occupying a postdoctoral position at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, he teaches the “Visions of the Occult: Introduction to Esotericism” seminar each summer and winter at UvA.

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 based at Imperial College London at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, where he led neuroimaging research on the effects of the potent psychedelic DMT in the human brain and consciousness. His work focuses on the neuroscience, psychology, beliefs and ethics of the psychedelic experience. He is also the director for the Foundation for the Study of Human Consciousness (EcoH) in Chile, an interdisciplinary team which combines the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness with the epistemological tradition initiated by Chilean thinkers such as Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana.

Laura Dev is Assistant Professor of Environmental Sciences and Society at the University of Wisconsin – Platteville. She is a political ecologist who uses interspecies lenses to understand how globalization and environmental change affect human-plant relationships and how interspecies relationships offer openings toward life. Her research has primarily been with Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon. Laura Dev received her PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley.

Christian Greer

Bruno Ramos Gomes is a Brazilian psychologist, with a Master’s degree in Public Health at the School of Public Health-USP, and a PhD in Public Health at University of Campinas, Brazil. In his masters, he researched the use of ayahuasca in the recovery of homeless people and drug users. In his PhD, he did a 12 month qualitative follow-up of patients treating drug dependence and depression. He has been helping patients integrate ibogaine and ayahuasca in their therapeutic processes for the last 12 years. He is a member of the ICARO (Interdisciplinary Cooperation for Ayahuasca Research and Outreach)-UNICAMP and Chacruna’s Ayahuasca Community Committee.

Anja Loizaga-Velder is a German-Mexican clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has been collaborating with indigenous healers and investigating the therapeutic potential of the ritual use of psychedelic plants for over 25 years. She earned a Ph.D. degree in Medical Psychology from Heidelberg University in Germany with a  doctoral dissertation on the topic: The therapeutic uses of ayahuasca in addiction treatment. She is a founding member and director of research and psychotherapy of the Nierika Institute for intercultural Medicine, in Mexico, a Mexican NGO dedicated to the investigation and preservation of indigenous traditions with sacred plant medicines and therapeutic applications of these medicines in the treatment of mental health challenges. Anja also is a professor and researcher in Humanities in Health at the Medical School at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where she works towards implementing a controlled clinical trial for evaluating the therapeutic efficacy of ayahuasca for addiction treatment and a pilot study with psilocybin for the treatment of depression.

Gabriel Amezcua Noriega is a Mexican anthropologist with a master’s degree in intercultural conflict from the ASH Berlin. He is a specialist in social network mapping, social conflict, medical anthropology, mental health and harm reduction. His current focus is on understanding the social universe of people working with psychedelic substances through therapeutic, recreational, profit-making or drug policy advancement.

Juan Scuro is a Uruguayan anthropologist and professor at the Social Anthropology Department, Universidad de la República, in Uruguay. He is co-coordinator of Arche, an Interdisciplinary Group of Psychedelic Studies. Dr. Scuro has an M.A and a Ph.D in Social Anthropology from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He began doing ethnographic research in different ayahuasca settings in 2010, including Ayahuasca Religions, New Age centers and Peruvian Vegetalismo tradition. At present, he is particularly interested in the way that Psychedelic Renaissance is developing in Uruguay.

Dr. Beatriz Caiuby Labate (Bia Labate) is a queer Brazilian anthropologist based in San Francisco. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice. She is Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines and serves as Public Education and Culture Specialist at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). She is also Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Additionally, she is Advisor for the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition and the Soltara Healing Center. Dr. Labate is a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil and editor of its site. She is author, co-author, and co-editor of twenty-eight books, two special-edition journals, and several peer-reviewed articles (https://bialabate.net).

Lígia Duque Platero is Chacruna’s Education Program Associate. She is a queer, cisgender Brazilian woman. She has an interdisciplinary background in history, anthropology and Latin American studies. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history (2005) and a history teacher training qualification (2006) from the University of São Paulo (USP), in Brazil. She has a master’s degree in Latin American Studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM – 2012) in Mexico City, addressing public policies in relation to Indigenous peoples and Indigenous education in Brazil and Mexico from the 1940s-1970s. She has a doctorate in humanities, with an emphasis on cultural anthropology (2018), from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), in Brazil. Her PhD looked at the cultural transformations and exchanges amid the alliance between the Yawanawá Indigenous people and an urban church of Santo Daime. Her main research focus areas are: ayahuasca, Santo Daime, sacred plants, shamanic tourism, Yawanawá (Pano) people, Indigenous policies and human rights in Brazil and Mexico. She is a research associate at the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) and at the Laboratory for the History of Religious Experiences (UFRJ/IFCS) in Brazil.

Celia Morgan has been researching psychedelics since her undergraduate dissertation in 1999 looking at the effects of ketamine on her friends and peers in traveler scenes and squat parties in London. She then undertook a PhD at University College London in clinical psychology focusing on trying to understand the unique subjective experience of ketamine, as well as its allure for the increasing numbers of people at that time who were getting seduced into very frequent use. She was mentored by the brilliant Professor Val Curran where she learned not only psychopharmacology and psychology but also how to  navigate the academic world as a woman.  She used a variety of techniques from neuroimaging to qualitative research. She spent some time at Yale University, and University of Melbourne and returned for a tenured lectureship at University College London, then moving to the University of Exeter where she became a full professor in 2014 and now lives by the sea. Her lived experience of neurodiversity and life threatening illness have given insights into the liminal states of psychedelic experience and while she runs clinical trials of psychedelics, her passion is transdisciplinary working to both decolonise psychedelics, including the experience of non-medical drug users, as well as to work to delve deeper into the curious mystical effects of these pluripotent agents.

Christine Diindiisi McCleave, enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Nation, is a doctoral student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Indigenous Studies program with a focus on Indigenous Knowledge Systems of entheogenic plant medicines for healing. Her master’s thesis on Native American spirituality and Christianity and the spectrum of Native spiritual practices today, including Peyote religion, led her to become CEO of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition where she helped introduce a bill for a national truth commission and worked with the United States Department of the Interior to investigate Indian Boarding Schools. Currently, she is facilitating Colorado’s Tribal Working Group under the Natural Medicine Health Act. In 2023, she was listed as one of 75 influential, innovative, and disruptive women in Psychedelics by DoubleBlind magazine. She is currently a member of the board for the Minnesota Council of Churches and the Vice President of the board for the Psychedelic Society of Minnesota.

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