Science Speakeasy: Microdosing – Marvellous Medicine or Fickle Fad?

Alistair is a lecturer in Geospatial Engineering at Newcastle University, using mapping data and computer models to explore sustainable and resilience cities. He’s particularly interested in the way that land-use and transport planning can be used to adapt our urban areas to climate change. He loves chairing the Science Speakeasy events because he gets to have fascinating discussions with knowledgeable people about subjects he knows nothing about!

Maria is a computational neuroscientist at Imperial College London. Her work focuses on neurodegeneration, sleep and drug use. She specialises in using super scale cognitive testing and advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to understand how cognitive processes such as memory, attention, problem solving and language differ from the general population in those who suffer with either neurological or psychiatric conditions, or who use drugs (such as psychedelics) recreationally. Follow Maria on Twitter.

Anna has over 20 years experience of practitioner work with substance use, including cannabis, and identifies as a lived and living experienced researcher. She is passionate about the human rights-based approaches to drug regulation, and the developing research around drug use for, pleasure, therapeutic and medicinal application.  She is currently a Lecturer in the School of Health at the University of Edinburgh, and an Honorary Research Assistant for Drug Science. She is the secretary to the Scottish Cross Party on Medicinal Cannabis, set up the Scottish Drug Policy Conversations: a multi-stakeholder deliberative group exploring drug policy issues in Scotland, and is co-founder of both the Scottish Cannabis Consortium and the Scottish Psychedelic Research Group (sprg.org).

Mourad is a senior registrar in psychiatry, currently working with the Regional Affective Disorder team in Newcastle (part of the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Trust (CNTW)) Mourad has a special interest in mood disorders, substance misuse, and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, and has dedicated his career to combining his passions. He is the lead for the psychedelic service in Newcastle which is currently in development after taking part in its first project investigating psilocybin for treatment of resistant depression, and which aims to facilitate the delivery of psychedelic therapy within the region, both through hosting further research trials and delivering teaching sessions on psychedelics and their potential applications, both to the public and fellow colleagues. Follow Mourad on Twitter.

David is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich. His research focuses on transpersonal experiences, anomalous phenomena and altered states of consciousness, especially via psychedelics. He has published more than 100 academic papers in this area, including ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience. When he is not running clinical drug trials with LSD, conducting DMT field experiments or observing apparent weather control with Mexican shamans, he directs the Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness salon and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 400 invited public lectures and conference presentations; won teaching, research and writing awards; organised numerous festivals, conferences, symposia, seminars, retreats, expeditions, pagan cabarets and pilgrimages; and has studied techniques of consciousness alteration from South America to India, from the perspective of scientists, shamans and Shivaites.