It's a Kind of 'Blue' Magic

Join us for an interdisciplinary workshop in the beautiful city of Lisbon to discuss key questions on self-consciousness, (dis)embodiment and Depersonalisation!

This event is a joint endeavor co-organised by:  

- the Co-Embodied Self Lab (CELab) at the Centre for Philosophy of Sciences, University of Lisbon (CFCUL) Portugal;

-  the Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal;

- the Unreal Charity, London, UK.  

It brings together world-leading scholars, junior researchers, artists, clinicians and more importantly people with lived experiences of Depersonalisation to address key questions around this widely spread yet under-acknowledged condition. 

Joint efforts from philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, arts and computational neuroscience will address the following (non-exhaustive) questions:
i) How does it feel to live with Depersonalisation on daily basis for more than 10 years?
ii) What does it mean to  ‘lose ’one’s sense of self?
iii) What is the relationship between the body, bodily movements and the self in people that feel detached from their bodies and from others?
iv) Can we tailor body- and movement-based potential interventions to alleviate depersonalisation?
v) How can artists and people with lived experiences of depersonalisation can contribute to advance our understanding of this distressing condition?
vi) what does it mean to feel like a “machine”/”robot”, and how can research from social robotics help us better address this question?
 
In addition to the talks, our event will showcase two art performances around depersonalisation, multisensory immersive experiences and the sense of self throughout the entire event:
 
- Senscapes is all about creating immersive visual and musical experiences that put people in the center of altered psychological states. This is done by taking brainwave data from human participants, and converting this data into music and art.


- Drawing Unrealness: Jodie Howard is an artist illustrator depicting what it is like to live with depersonalisation. Jodie’s amazing drawings will be displayed throughout the entire event to help get a better grip on the phenomenological subjective experiences of self-detachment as lived from a first person perspective. 
 
The event, together with interviews with the Principal Investigator (Dr Anna Ciaunica) leading the project ‘It’s a Kind of Magic’: Exploring Multisensory Modulation of the Sense of Self Through Bodily Movements and Action Observation in Depersonalisation and Psychedelic Experiences” – generously funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation and SSNAP Duke University  – will be filmed to feature in a documentary on Depersonalisation.

This event is generously funded by: 

- The project It’s a Kind of Magic’: Exploring Multisensory Modulation of the Sense of Self Through Bodily Movements and Action Observation in Depersonalisation and Psychedelic Experiences) funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation and SSNAP Duke University award n° TWCF0384 to Dr Anna Ciaunica (PI), Dr Adam Safron (co-PI), Prof Ana Tajadura Jimenz, Prof Alex Galvez Pol, and Prof Anil Seth.
- The Centre for Philosophy of Sciences, University of Lisbon (CFCUL), Portugal (UIDB/00678/2020);
- Unreal Charity.

Image by Jodie Howard

As if I am a ghost, 2021
an illustrations made for the charity ‘Unreal’ 
© Jodie Howard