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HealingEncounters at the AAA meetings in Toronto/Tkaronto

In Nov. 2023, Pietro Benedito and Emilia Sanabria took part in the American Anthropological Association's Annual meeting "Transitions" held in Toronto/TkarontoThey gave a paper in the “Engineering Equity: The New Pragmatics of Global Health Innovation” panel organised by Ann Kelly with Alice Street, Ramah McKay, Manjari Mahajan, Alex Nading and Peter Redfield. They also took part in a Round Table organised by Annette Leibing and Dominique Behague titled Perspectivizing health: Frictions and alliances in conjoint conversations between Brazil and the Global North where they discussed their paper “Psychedelic Nation? Deprovincializing the psychedelic renaissance from Brazil”

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ABRAMD's biannual conference - Brasília, DF

In November 2023, Pietro Benedito took part in the 9th International Conference of ABRAMD (Brazilian Multidisciplinary Association of Drug Studies), which was held at the University of Brasilia in the Brazilian federal district. He took part in the event on two occasions, at the table "Trans Potencies - experience and critique in the progreCIStic field of drugs" alongside psychologist and harm reductionist Julia Bueno, and at the Thematic Seminar on Psychedelics alongside APB members Daniele Monteiro and Fernando Beserra, psychiatrist Erica Pessoa, and researcher Paulo Morais.

Pietro e Julia    Psicodélicos


Thematic Seminar Knowledge Encounters: transversalities and experiences

Isabel de Rose, Edgar R. Barbosa Neto e Tiago Heliodoro Nascimento hosted the fourth edition of the Thematic Seminar "Knowledge Encounters: transveralities and experiences". The seminar took place during the 9th Brazilian Anthropology of Science and Technology Meeting (ReACT) in Goiania, between November 21 and 24th.

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ESOCITE.BR

Isabel de Rose participated in the 10th Brazilian National Symposium of Science, Technology and Society (ESOCITE.BR). She took part in the Round Table "Decentering Negationisms in the Natural and Human Sciences: strategies for a plural diagnostic from the Global South", and in the Forum "Feminist Perspectives on Science and Technology: experiences of Sharing and Mobilization based on Anthropology". The event took place in Maceió between November 25 and 27. 


Workshop "Il y a des alternatives" - Bordeaux, France

Between 11 and 13 October 2023, Emilia Sanabria and Pietro Benedito took part in the workshop "Il y a des alternatives" organised by Charlotte Brives and Koichi Kameda in the city of Bordeaux. The event brought together researchers from the field of STS, who presented their research in order to reflect on alternatives to the hegemonic model of science production. At the workshop, Emilia and Pietro presented the paper "Brazil: Psychedelic nation?"

 bordeaux


Workshop “Substance, Set & Setting” - Leyden, Pays-Bas

Between August 28 and September 1, Piera Talin and Pietro Benedito took part in the workshop "Substance, Set & Setting: Medical, religious and other uses of psychedelics", held at the Lorentz Center@Oort, and sponsored by the Open Foundation, Nias, Improbability Foundation and PRSM Lab. The aim of the workshop was to: “bring together leading international researchers and experts from different disciplinary backgrounds (including academics, clinicians, and expert practitioners) to foster an exchange of ideas and best practices around the roles and functions of set and setting in psychedelic use.”

 substance set setting poster pic


Tari Ibiranai - ecoacoustic residency in the Forest

In July 2023, Ibã Sales, Emilia Sanabria, Denis Chartier and members of the MAHKU collective held a collaborative research residency in eco-acoustic methods in the Xiko Kurumim community. Our objective was to conduct a collaborative exploration of the sonic dimensions of the ayahuasca myths and the sound ecologies of the human (and more-than-human) inhabitants of the Alto Rio Jordão, in Acre, Brazil.

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Interdisciplinary perspectives on Psychedelic Integration

 Luís Fernando Tófoli and Emilia Sanabria will present their transdisciplinary analysis of Psychedelic Integration at the Brazilian Psychedelic Association's TRIP meeting (Network of Psychedelic Integration Therapists) https://www.associacaopsicodelica.org/trip-apb

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UrsuLab Minga (*postponed*)

The Minga – in Indigenous Latin American traditions - is a festive community gathering to join forces to build a house, clear a garden, make a school or health centre or any other labour that requires a multitude. Food and stories are shared, visions are realised together.  In June 2023, UrsuLab’s international community will come together to plant a garden and weave stories together.  We evoke the spirit of the Minga, based on the ancestral intelligence of receiving by giving, to concretise and plant the shared vision of UrsuLab as a space of regeneration and growth. A Minga is an offering at the altar of the common good, a thank you to the places that help us thrive and create. 

On 15-16-17 June, Antre Peaux will hold a Minga to lend a hand, laugh, sing, celebrate, dance, think and dream together by creating a beautiful garden in the wasteland, open to all. The programme will include speculative workshops, multispecies performances, concerts, composting, skill shares and time to meet around a bountiful table. The Minga is a project conceived by Aniara Rodado, artist-researcher in residence at UrsuLab, in collaboration with HealingEncounters. 

 


Healing Encounters' Ethical & Scientific Advisor Ibã Sales Huni Kuin and MAHKU inaugurate retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MASP) 

More information here: https://www.masp.org.br/exposicoes/mahku-miracoes

 


 4S Annual Conference (Society for the Social Studies of Science), 2022

On December 10, 2022, Pietro Benedito, Isabel de Rose, Emilia Sanabria and Piera Talin presented the paper "Future Ayahuasca Care Spaces: An Experimental Speculative Exercise" at the panel "Holding Complex Encounters: Relating in Difference", organized by Isabel de Rose and Emilia Sanabria. The presentation took place at the Annual 4S Conference in hybrid mode, with part of the team in Cholula (Mexico) and the other part online.


Conjuring epistemicides: Towards new alliances between witches, plants and machines 

Aniara Rodado brilliantly defends her PhD thesis at the Ecole polytechnique on Monday 7th November 2022. The thesis provides an analysis of her artistic practices in the company of plants. Aniara’s artworks seeks to reactivate technologies specific to transspecies interactions in marginalized and «feminized» communities, and to illuminate epistemologies submerged by hegemonic systems of thought. She examines four pieces that she created and performed between 2016 and 2021, that allow her to bring to light what is usually hidden behind art forms. In this, she addresses the reader from the vital ground usually called research/creation in the hope that the slash (/) that separates these two words will dilute there. In Becoming Plant-Witch-Machine, Capsulas a mano and Against Witch Washing, she is interested in witches, shamans, medicines, health, violence on feminized bodies, the health-disease dichotomy, trafficking of substances for the pharmaceutical industry, drug trafficking and North-South relations in the spice route. She takes this path to reveal some epistemicides related to witch hunts and the technologies and narratives associated with the circulation of plant-based substances. In Basic Transmutation/Alien-Migration, she focuss on the notion of the stranger and accompanies the eucalyptus in its journey as an undocumented migrant across the planet, within a planetary biotech forestry project that standardizes landscapes, dries soils, and eliminates primary forests. However, her intention is to propose an alliance in joyful dystopia and to accept that it is the eucalyptus that will greet us at the entrance of the garden at the end of the world. The thesis comes from the experimental field of dance. Aniara’s practice calls upon certain plants, seeking to reactivate witchcraft and non-anthropocentric knowledges that makes the proliferation of life possible. It explores trans-species alternatives and alliances necessary to address the current ecological crisis. She includes human and non-human bodies, their metabolisms, machines and sensory experimentations. At stake is the creation of knowledge that will allow us to imagine desirable futures, opposing a hierarchical world in which reign the strategies of standardization of life. The knowledge she calls upon emerges from «low technologies»: from plants and soils, from scientific laboratories, from popular markets, kitchens, from indigenous communities, peasants and other subordinates, and from contemporary art. 


Healing Encounters participates in the IV Indigenous Ayahuasca Conference

This event, held on Ashaninka territory in the state of Acre, Brazil brought together delegates from over 35 Indigenous nations to discuss the futures of ayahusaca. The Declaration can be found here: https://ayahuascaconferenciaindigena.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Apresentacao_CARTA-IV-Conferencia-Indigena-da-Ayahuasca-1.pdf

More information on this event can be found here: https://ayahuascaconferenciaindigena.org/en/ 


Ayahuasca Future Care Spaces 2 

On 17th of October, the Healing Encounters Team hosted the second Ayahuasca Future Care Spaces event, welcoming back people from different parts of Brazil to continue speculation on Ayahuasca Future Care Spaces.


Pietro’s lecture at “Mente Manifesta” from Brazilian Psychedelic Association

On August 6th, Pietro participated as a lecturer at the online course on psychedelics uses and history from the Brazilian Psychedelic Association (APB).


Ayahuasca Future Care Spaces

On 11th of July, the Healing Encounters Team hosted the first Ayahuasca Future Care Spaces event. The online event welcomed people from different parts of Brazil, who are connected to ayahuasca care spaces.


ShipiboRao Writing Residency in June

Members of ShipiboRao and HealingEncounters gathered together for a week of co-laborative writing near Briare, in Central France.


HealingEncounters in person residency

In May 2022 the whole team gathered for a week-long of writing and concept mapping together at La Ferme du Ravin Bleu.


“Holding Complex Encounters: Relating in Difference” 

To come: Open Panel at the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) Conference in Chololua, México, 7-10 Dec. 2022.

Organizers: Emilia Sanabria, Isabel de Rose, Silvia Mesturini; Discussant: Joe Dumit (University California Davis) 

This panel invites empirically-based presentations that explore otherwise ways of making knowledge together, examining how care, good relations and transformative justice can be cultivated within interdisciplinary, transnational or intercultural knowledge encounters. It recognizes that Western technoscience plays a key role in epistemicides and the deepening of global inequalitieswhilst simultaneously refusing to give practices of knowing in common up. It asks: can space be held for renewed ways of relating in difference? What strategies, modes of collective attention, spatial or interpersonal arrangements productively disrupt racist, sexist, and otherwise hierarchical knowledge production assemblages and settings? What are the costs or risks of entering into encounter for the different parties involved? How can these be better redistributed? We aim to learn together by gathering experiments in encountering that begin by recognizing legacies of erasure and oppression as they seek to reconfigure modes of knowing in common. We are interested in learning from “failures”, dead-ends or changes of direction that collaborative ventures were allowed to take in the ever intensifying neoliberalization of University knowledge production, as well as learning about who was (or not) allowed to fail. We particularly welcome contributions that critically engage with scientific practices that purport to “validate” Indigenous or traditional knowledges, contributions that explore spaces of encounter between art and science, or ones that  actively recognize and engage more-than-human presences. Submissions in Spanish, Portuguese & English are welcome, as are those that trouble and experiment with the format of the conference paper.


Otherwise Ayahuascas Residency 

The Healing Encounters team spent the week of the 21-25th Feb 2022 in an immersive speculative residency, exploring ways to imagine other possible futures. We came together to design a series of speculative events, exploring ways of story-telling that are not founded on (human) HEroes or end-of-the-(one)-world narratives. Our intention was to grow collective awareness about the consequences of our narratives and to outline steps for co- producing otherwise futures with our myriad co-labor-ators. 

                                           


Silvia Mesturini's lecture at Sorbonne, Paris

In January 2022, Silvia Mesturini was an invited lecturer within the Master Program of the Institute of Social and Economic Development IEDES – Sorbonne, Paris. Her lecture title was: “Ayahuasca: a Medical Practice?”.


Vegetal Encounters - Planthropolab

Silvia Mesturini and Emilia Sanabria presented a talk (Vegetal Encounters) at the Planthropolab meeting hosted by Julie Laplante and team at the University of Ottawa on Jan 21st 2022 


 

"Knowledge Encounters: transversalities and experiences"

The special issue “Knowledge Encounters: transversalities and experiences” organized by Edgar Rodrigues Barbosa Neto, Isabel Santana de Rose and Marcio Goldman was published by Revista Mundaú. The two volumes of this special issue gather ethnographic, political-pedagogical and epistemological discussions about diverse experiences of “knowledge encounters” in academic settings. These experiences encompass the inclusion of traditional knowledge experts as teachers in Brazilian universities, affirmative action policies, and intercultural graduation courses. The first volume was launched in May 2021 with eleven papers; the second, published in December 2021, has eight papers and one interview.

Link para o primeiro volume: https://www.seer.ufal.br/index.php/revistamundau/issue/view/592

Link para o segundo volume: https://www.seer.ufal.br/index.php/revistamundau/issue/view/622


Terra Sacra Exhibition

Elena del Drago, presenter and author of the radiophonic program A3. Il formato dell’arte, Rai Radio 3, interviews Flavio Arensi and Piera Talin about the exhibition Terra Sacra. L’arte necessaria. Luoghi, Comunità, esistenze curated and edited by Flavio Arensi. You can listen the podcast in Italian here: https://www.raiplaysound.it/audio/2021/12/A3-IL-FORMATO-DELLARTE-4a6693f4-33b9-43c7-8ab2-d191297eb177.html


Pietro Benedito at the Brazilian Multidisciplinary Drug Studies Association Conference

From 10-13th Nov 2022, Pietro Benedito participated in ABRAMD’s (Brazilian Multidisciplinary Drug Studies Association) 8th Conference held in Recife, Brazil. He presented Healing Encounter’s work in the roundtable “Psychedelic Renaissances and its effects in Brazil” and participated in the roundtable “Gender issues among ayahuasqueiros”.


Healing Encounters, ICARO & Ciência Psicodélica's 7th Encontros Psicodélicos

Watch replay on YouTube


 4S Annual Conference (Society for the Social Studies of Science), 2021

Emilia Sanabria participates in the Diseased Landscapes: Health and Illness in Territories of Extraction IV – Resistance panel with a paper titled 

"Extracting Ayahuasca, Crafting Settings for Health under Brazilian Settler Colonialism" 


PhytoFutures

On the 4th October 2021 Silvia Mesturini and Emilia Sanabria held a speculative writing workshop titled PhytoFutures with guests Xan Chacko (Wellesley College), Joe Dumit (University California Davis), Juan Carlos Galeano (Florida State University), Inés Hernandez-Avila (University California Davis), Julie Laplante (University of Ottawa), Kristi Onzik (University California Davis), Špela Petrič (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Luiza Prado (Center for Other Worlds, Lusofona University), Daniel Restrepo (University of Ottawa), Karyn Recollet (University of Ottawa), Giorgia Tresca (Tree Conservatory, Ticino) 


Healing Encounters, ICARO & Ciência Psicodélica's 6th Encontros Psicodélicos

Watch replay on Youtube 


Healing Encounters, ICARO Ciência Psicodélica's 5th Encontros Psicodélicos

Piera Talin is discussant in the event “Psicodélicos no tratamento da dependência de substâncias” with psychologist Bruno Ramos Gomes and psychoanalyst Adriano de Camargo of the Encontros Psicodélicos organized by Healing Encounters, ICARO and Ciência Psicodélica.

Watch replay on Youtube


Healing Encounters, ICAROCiência Psicodélica's 4th Encontros Psicodélicos

Pietro Benedito is discussant in the event with Maria Betânia Albuquerque and Isabel de Rose, of the Encontros Psicodélicos organized by Healing Encounters, ICARO and Ciência Psicodélica.

Watch replay on Youtube


Pietro Benedito gives a talk at the Brazilian Psychedelic Association

On August 23rd, Pietro Benedito and Luis Felipe Valêncio lectured the class "Psicodelicos e diversidade sexual e de gênero" (Psychedelics and Sexual and Gender Diversity) within APB's monthly study group.

 


Pietro Benedito and Piera Talin teach on the “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ayahuasca” course (ICARO, UNICAMP)

Between August and December 2021, ICARO is organizing its “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ayahuasca” course online. Pietro will be presenting a Module on “Ayahuascas and their uses” on the 26th August and “Sexual and Gender Diversity” on 2nd December and Piera will present the Module “Reformulations of a sacred medicine in Brazil and Europe on the 18th November. 


The Making of Psychedelic Medicines : Material-Semiotic Transformations in the Medicalization of Psilocybin Mushrooms 

On 27th July 2021, Alberto Cantizani Lopez brilliantly defended his Masters dissertation titled “The Making of Psychedelic Medicines : Material-Semiotic Transformations in the Medicalization of Psilocybin Mushrooms” carried out in the Anthropology department of the University of Amsterdam, under the supervision of Emilia Sanabria. 


Silvia Mesturini, Daiara Tukano and Isabelle Stengers in Conversation 

In July 2021, Silvia Mesturini, in collaboration with José Carlos Bouso and the International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service (ICEERS) organized and moderated the panel “Towards Common Evidence: Indigenous and scientific practices of knowledge” of the PSYCHED Conference 2021, with guests Isabelle Stengers and Daiara Tukano.


SALSA Panel "From Ritual to Justice: Towards a Decolonial and Feminist Approach to Ayahuasca"

In June 2021, Silvia Mesturini, in collaboration with Olivia Marcus (University of Connecticut) organized the workshop “From Ritual to Justice: Towards a Decolonial and Feminist Approach to Ayahuasca” within the XIII biannual conference of SALSA, Society of Anthropology of Low Land South America, hosted by the University of Virginia. Within this workshop, Silvia Mesturini presented the paper: “Of Rituals and Ruins. An Entangled Perspective on Ayahuasca”.

Emilia Sanabria (PI of Healing Encounters) and Daniela Peluso (University of Kent) were the workshop Chairs and Discussants.


Healing Encounters, ICARO & Ciência Psicodélica's 3rd Encontros Psicodélicos 

 

Watch replay on Youtube


Open Source Body and Radical Care Conference 

Emilia Sanabria participates in the Open Source Body and Radical Care Conference panel on Anthropology, Feminism, Decoloniality and Radical Care (moderated by Natasa Petresin, with Paloma Ayala, Luiza Prado and Aniara Rodado). Her talk was titled: “Crafting Settings for Otherwise Health under Brazilian Settler Colonialism”

https://www.opensourcebody.eu 


Conversation between art, anthropology and ritual 

On May 17th, 2021 and with the writer and performer Sandra Lessa, PieraTalinorganised the event “Conversa entre arte, antropologia e ritualidadesobre as encruzilhadas do povo da rua com ayahuasca” (Conversation between art, anthropology and ritual about the crossroads of the people of the street and ayahuasca) with the participation of the Healing Encounters team, the documentarist Tatiana Lohmann, artist and professor Cristiano Meirelles and psychologist Bruno Simões Gonsalves, around the paper "Pra Quem Rezava Maria Padilha?" by Tatiana Lohmann and Sandra Lessa, finalists in the Marielle Franco Award 2021.


Piera na aula "Introdução à ayahuasca e a difusão global de seus usos"

On May 10th, 2021, Piera Talin gives the lecture “Introduction to ayahuasca and the global diffusion of its uses” as Guest Lecturer in the Master Course of Medical Anthropology of the Amsterdam University College.


Pietro (Camis) Benedito & Emilia Sanabria participate in the Plantas Sagradas en las Americas II virtual summit 

 


Healing Encounters, ICARO & Ciência Psicodélica's 2nd Encontros Psicodélicos 

 

Watch replay on Youtube


Healing Encounters, ICARO & Ciência Psicodélica launch "Psychedelic Encounters: Interdisciplinary talks on ayahuasca and other psychoactives" 

Healing Encounters, ICARO (Interdisciplinary Cooperation for Ayahuasca Research and Outreach) &Ciência Psicodélica are co-organizing a series of live discussions titled "Psychedelic Encounters: Interdisciplinary talks on ayahuasca and other psychoactives". These will occur every first Wednesday of the month, starting on the 7th April 2021 with a conversation between Luis F. Tofoli & Emilia Sanabria, hosted by Lucas Maia with commentaries from Camis Benedito. 

Watch replay on Youtube


Writing New Worlds Residency

HealingEncounters will spend a week in an immersive speculative writing residency hosted by UrsuLab, a biomedia lab that takes its inspiration from science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin. The residency builds on a first science fiction writing experience between Joe Dumit and Emilia Sanabria as part of an invitation from the journal American Ethnologist to speculate on futures post-Covid. It draws inspiration from afro-feminist expertise on engaging otherwise with futures and will take up practices offered by queer Afrofeminist trouble-maker Alexis Pauline Gumbs. We will be joined by Joe Dumit (UC Davis), Kris Peterson (UC Irvine) and Aniara Rodado (Ecole Polytechnique). 


Healing Encounters at ICPR2020

The Healing Encounters team participated in the online Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research organised by Open Foundation (24-27th Jan 2020). Emilia Sanabria was Moderator and Disscussant of a panel titled "Bringing the Lab to Ayahuasca" visible here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEaQ4Z7O6-Q&feature=youtu.be


Silvia Mesturini in lecture “Ruins, interdependencies and non-humans” at Sorbonne.

In January 2021, Silvia Mesturini was an invited lecturer within the Master Program of the Institute of Social and Economic Development IEDES – Sorbonne, Paris. Her lecture title was: “Ruins, interdependencies and non-humans”.


Silvia Mesturini as guest in the seminar “Mental Health in Social Context”

In October 2020, Silvia Mesturini gave a talk as invited guest in the seminar “Mental Health in Social Context”, in collaboration with the Prospective Anthropology Lab (LAAP) of University of Louvain and the Mental Health Service “Le Méridien” of Brussels. Her talk’s title was “Anthropology of Ruins and Practices of care” and addressed the pertinence of ethnographic methods and feminist science studies for research within social work and mental health treatment.


Healing Encounters at ICPR2020

The Healing Encounters team participated in the online Interdisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Research organised by Open Foundation (24-27th Jan 2020). Emilia Sanabria was Moderator and Disscussant of a panel titled "Bringing the Lab to Ayahuasca" visible here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEaQ4Z7O6-Q&feature=youtu.be


(Psychedelics) Beyond the Neuro

     

Emilia Sanabria contributes to the CulAnth HotSpots series "Psychedelic Revival" with a short essay on the somatic dimensions of ritual healing among Brazilian neoayahuasca ritual groups


Place Beyond Space? Rethinking “Setting” think-shop

 

The rationale for this Encounters think-shop is to explore the concept of space as it pertains to the strong “entourage effect” of ayahuasca. Bringing together scholars and readings that engage space in a wide range of manners, we will explore the materialist underpinnings of conventional notions of space, the efficacy of spaces, idioms such as “holding space”, space as infrastructure, space and the body and examine the spatial dimensions of settler colonial projects (17th July 2020).


Multiscalar Lockdown Online Fiesta

Healing Encounters Multiscalar Lockdown Fiesta via Zoom with Kris Peterson (UC Irvine), Valerie Olson (UC Irvine) and the HealingEncounters team. Multiscalar research design as developed by Peteron and Olson invites us to move and think with our projects paying attention to the affective, embodied and intuitive dimensions of research. This workshop stemmed from the invitation to rework our individual project Concept Maps, placing COVID on them and rescaling the relations between the elements held together in light of this extraordinary event (25th May 2020).


Piera Talin Medical Anthropology Lecture

Piera Talin gives an online lecture titled Introduction to ayahuasca and global diffusion of its uses” Ashley Witcher's "Medical Anthropology” class, at the Amsterdam University College (11th May 2020).


Ayahuasca ritual use in contemporary urban Brazil

Healing Encounters workshop “Ayahuasca ritual use in contemporary urban Brazil: specificities, politics and practices of expertise” with Bruno Ramos Gomes (Psychologist, PhD Candidate at UNICAMP, University of Campinas, Brazil) who presented a talk titled “Contemporary ritual and clinical uses of ayahuasca and ibogaine for the treatment of addiction among homeless people in the city of São Paulo, Brazil.” (28-29th January 2020).


In Conversation with Isabelle Stengers

Silvia Mesturini is discussant of Isabelle Stengers’s latest book “Civiliser la modernité?” at the Anthropology department of the University of Louvain, Belgium (12th November 2019).


Ayahuasca: a Healing Ritual?

Silvia Mesturini gives a lecture at the Institute of Development Studies (IEDES) of Paris 1 - La Sorbonne, titled Ayahuasca: a Healing Ritual?” (20th November 2019).


Circulação de rituais de ayahuasca e saύde mental urbana

Piera Talin gives a lecture titled Circulação de rituais de ayahuasca e saύde mental urbana” in Prof. Rafaela Teixeira Zorzanelli’s seminar “History of the Concept of Medicalisation” at the Institute of Social Medicine, University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (19th November 2019).


Beyond Para-Ethnography: Collaborative Interdisciplinary Research Design

Workshop organised by the Healing Encounters project at CERMES3 with Joe Dumit, Pablo Jensen and Aniara Rodado (7th Nov. 2019).    

The concept of para-ethnography was formulated to address the challenges of pursuing ethnography within new contexts of fieldwork in settings dominated by scientific knowledge and/or a technocratic ethos. This workshop provides a space to discuss and experiment with different modes of setting up alliances and collaborations with the scientists we are working with. It builds on the idea that as anthropologists and STS scholars we are doing histories of the present political, economic and ethical situations in which fact-making takes place. How can we ask better questions alongside our collaborators engaged in experimental work and fact-making in the lab? The workshop will explore the use of scientometric cartographies and future speculation games (such as science fiction research imaginaries) to envisage renewed ways of engaging conversations with scientists over the mapping of how science is changing and whether it could be done differently. 


Multiscalar Research Design workshop

The Healing Encounters team, along with colleagues working on other projects at the intersections of anthropology and Science & Technology Studies (Claire Beaudevin, Charlotte Brives, Fanny Chabrol, Denis Chartier, Joe Dumit, Sophie Houdart, Mariana Rios) took part in a fantastic three-day residential workshop designed to help researchers elaborate and discuss the conceptualisation of their research projects through innovative forms of scaling. The workshop was organised by Emilia Sanabria and facilitated by Professors Kris Peterson and Valerie Olson, elaborating on the graduate course they teach at University California Irvine. The worshop was held in Montigny-Lencoup (11-14th September 2019).


Breaking Convention

Chris Elcock participates in the 2019 Breaking Convention conference on psychedelics held at Greenwich University, London (15-18th August 2019). 


Speaking Plants: decolonial perspectives on ayahuasca, animism and healing

Emilia Sanabria was invited speaker at the PACT Zollverein’s Bodies in Trouble conference, Essen Germany (12th July 2019). You can view talk called Speaking Plants: decolonial perspectives on ayahuasca, animism and healing here

She was also discussant of Kaushik Sunder Rajan’s talk On the Question of Value in Biomedicine.


Psychedelic Psychiatry in New York City

Chris Elcock presented a paper titled “Psychedelic Psychiatry in New York City, ca. 1960-1970” at the Alcohol and Drugs History Society Conference Shanghai University, 12 June 2019, in a Panel titled: Therapy, Counter-Culture, or Elitism? Revisiting Psychedelics. Link to the full conference program.


Ethics Training Workshop

The project’s mandatory Ethics Training Workshop was held at CERMES3, Paris. The workshop was led by  Prof. Anita Hardon and Ibã Isais Sales Huni Kuin – one of the project’s Indigenous Visiting Experts – who provided background on the stakes of conducting research with Indigenous people in an ethically-informed manner (4-5th June 2019). 


Healing Encounters at the World Ayahuasca Conference 2019 in Girona 

The Healing Encounters team took part in the 3rd World Ayahuasca Conference, Girona. Emilia Sanabria chaired a panel with Ibã Dua Bake Huni Kuin and Dani Pinheiro Sales Kaxinawa titled Translating and transmitting the spirit of the forest: Lessons for survival in the Anthropocene from the Huni Kuin people and translated Ibã Dua Bake Huni Kuin’s conference Connecting technology and ancestral knowledge to reveal the invisible on the AYA Art Stage (31 May to 2 June 2019).


Emilia Sanabria’s HDR defence

Emilia Sanabria defended her Habilitation à diriger des recherches at Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon (29th mars 2019). The jury was composed of: Michèle Cros (Professeure d’anthropologie, Université de Lyon 2); João de Pina-Cabral (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Kent) – Rapporteur; Sylvie Fainzang (Directrice de recherche, Inserm); Jean-Paul Gaudillière (Directeur de recherche, Inserm & Directeur d’études cumulant EHESS) – Rapporteur; Sophie Houdart (Directrice de recherche, CNRS) – Rapportrice; Frédéric Le Marcis (Professeur d’anthropologie, Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon) – Garant.

Emilia’s HDR is composed of three volumes: Vol. 1. Mémoire de synthèse : Récit d’une cueillette : anthropologie du corps, du médicament, de l'alimentation et des régimes de preuve en santé publique: Vol. 2. Recueil de publications; Vol. 3. Manuscrit inédit : Towards an anthropology of encounters: ayahuasca’s multiplicity and the politics of knowledge.


Plantas Sagradas en las Amaricas

Silvia MESTURINI participates in the International Conference “Plantas Sagradas en las Amaricas” in Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico. The title of her presentation: “How to preserve an entangled ayahuasca?” (Feb 2018).


Beyond Psychedelics Conference, Prague

Healing Encounters takes part in the Beyond Psychedelics Conference in Prague https://beyondpsychedelics.cz (21-24th June 2018).


Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Ayahuasca Winter School

Piera Talin takes part in the “Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Ayahuasca” Winter School 2018, University of Campinas, Brazil. School of Medical Sciences and ICARO – Interdisciplinary Cooperation for Ayahuasca research and Outreach, headed by Prof. Luís Fernando Tófoli.  Campinas (2-6th July 2018).