about us

Holds a PhD in Sociology and is an Associate Professor at the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities (NOVA FCSH), where he teaches in the Department of Sociology. He is also an integrated researcher at CICS.NOVA - Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences. He has participated in multiple research projects (national and international) in the areas of youth cultures, children/youth and digital media, activism and participation and, more recently, religious movements, spiritual practices and psychedelics. Among other publications, co-organized Protest, Youth and Precariousness (with R. Carmo, Berghahn, 2020), A arte de construir cidadania: juventude, práticas criativas e ativismo (with A. Sarrouy and R. Campos, Tinta da China, 2022) and Ativismo, participação e cidadania digital (with J. Rodrigues and R. Campos, Ed. Húmus, in press). He is currently the lead researcher of SPIRECTS - Spiritual practices and psychedelic substances in ritualized emerging contexts: therapeutic and socio-cultural implications (2023.13311.PEX), project funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

Legal Consultant, Clinical psychologist and Visiting Fellow at the University of Northampton (UK), where she completed a PhD in hypnotically induced near-death experiences with the financial support of BIAL Foundation. Former member of LIMMIT-Laboratory of Mind Matter Interaction with Therapeutic Intention, where she began her collaboration with research projects on non-ordinary states of consciousness, including CIBIT-Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research), ICEERS (International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service), and ALEF Trust (UK). In her clinical practice, she uses a transpersonal vision that aims to explore consciousness resources, in order to support people going through cycles of deep psychological transformation, spiritual emergency crises and integration after challenging psychedelic experiences.

Eugenia Roussou is a social anthropologist (PhD, UCL, University of London, 2010). She is currently a senior researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA-Iscte), Lisbon, Portugal, and the Principal Investigator of the research project ReSpell: ‘Religion, Spirituality and Wellbeing: a Comparative Approach of Transreligiosity and Crisis in Southern Europe’, which is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and hosted by CRIA. She is the author of Orthodox Christianity, New Age Spirituality and Vernacular Religion: the Evil Eye in Greece. London: Bloomsbury (2021) and of plenty of articles and book chapters on the themes of religion and spirituality, ritual healing practices, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), transreligiosity, spiritual elasticity, health and wellbeing, among others, with particular comparative geographical reference to Portugal and Greece.

Ricardo Campos is a principal researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Social Sciences of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (CICS.NOVA) and a guest lecturer at the Master’s and Doctoral programs in Intercultural Relations at Universidade Aberta. He is a founding member and co-coordinator of the Rede Luso-Brasileira de pesquisa em Artes e Intervenções Urbanas (RAIU). He coordinated the projects Artcitizenship - Young people and the arts of citizenship: activism, participatory culture and creative practices (2019-2022), TransUrbArts - Emergent Urban Arts is Lisbon and São Paulo (2016-2020), both with financial support from the Foundation for Science and Technology. Over the years he has carried out research in various research centers on the themes of urban youth cultures, urban art, digital media, visual anthropology and visual culture, with several book chapters and articles in national and international journals on these topics.

Tiago Pinto is a PhD student at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto, affiliated with the university's Institute of Sociology. He is also a member of the coordinating team for the Sociology of Religion Research Network of the Portuguese Sociology Association (APS). His research focuses on New Age spiritualities and their intersections with contemporary environmental and religious issues. His recent publications include "The New Age's Harmony with Nature" (In press, 2024), "Spiritual Representations in Rural Ecovillages: A Systematic Review" (2024), and "New Age and Environment: New Forms of Spirituality and Lifestyle in the Context of Secularisation?" (2023). In these works, Pinto examines emerging forms of spirituality and lifestyles within ecovillage contexts. An active researcher in contemporary religious studies, Pinto has presented his work at numerous national and international conferences. His PhD project contributes to understanding the interplay between spiritual practices in ecovillages and the intentional use of psychedelics. By integrating psychedelics into his theoretical and methodological frameworks, Pinto offers new insights into their role in shaping modern spirituality and environmentalism.

Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, and Perrott-Warrick Senior Researcher (via Trinity College Cambridge). His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics, having published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including thirteen books, such as Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience. When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, exploring lucid dream precognition, or exploring apparent weather control with Mexican shamans he manages a small ancient woodland and is a cofounder and trustee of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex, England.

Jerónimo Mazarrasa is Director of Social Innovation at the ICEERS Foundation. In the past 5 years he has devoted most of his energy to exploring how ceremonial plant practices can be integrated outside of their cultures of origin. He has worked with facilitator communities in self regulation processes, developed harm reduction tools, initiatives and trainings, commissioned scientific research as well as legal and policy reports to inform proposals for the integrations of ceremonial plant practices in global north societies. Previous to that, he wrote and produced four documentaries on various aspects of the West's encounter with indigenous knowledge, from ayahuasca in the treatment of drug addiction, featuring Gabor Maté, to Colombia’s Kogi Mamos, the Brazilian ayahuasca religions, and Bruce Parry’s last feature film, Tawai. He has travelled extensively through South America, researching a broad spectrum of indigenous, mestizo and Western ayahuasca practices and has lectured internationally on the past, present and future of the globalization of traditional indigenous medicines.

Stéphane Blumer holds a Master's degree in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a PhD in Social Anthropology from EHESS—École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. He is a visual artist and anthropologist working at the intersection of visual cultures and technopolitics. His research explores capitalomorphosis and ecosystemic thinking through processes of normativity in the context of environmental and social crises. He is currently an associate researcher at EHESS and CICS.NOVA, and collaborates with several European networks (COSTaction ARTinRARE / ELIA). He has taught Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Paris Nanterre (2016-2020), Artistic Studies and Design at NABA in Milan (2024-2025) and at NOVA University in Lisbon (2025), and co-leads the seminar ‘la Fabrique de l'Anthropologie Politique’ at EHESS in Paris. As curator and manager of international residency and exhibition programmes, he co-directs comıtė, a research centre for the Arts and Social Sciences in Lisbon.