2024 Speakers

Chris Fields, Tufts University, USA
Chris Fields, PhD is a Researcher at Tufts University and a private consultant. His current work focuses on quantum-information based models of multi-observer communication, shared system identification, and consistent embedding of identified systems in a spatial geometry.  These models have allowed reformulating the Free Energy Principle (FEP) of Karl Friston and colleagues in the language of quantum information theory and the systematic exploration of qualitative differences between classical and quantum formulations of the FEP.  They have also provided a first-principles understanding of compartmentalization, high fan-in/fan-out morphology, and hierarchical control in biological systems at multiple scales.  For recent publications, see https://chrisfieldsresearch.com/.


Karin Fierke, University of St. Andrews, Scotland
K.M. Fierke is a Professor of International Relations in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She has published widely on quantum social theory, including, among others, her most recent book, Snapshots from Home: Mind, Action and Strategy in an Uncertain World (Bristol 2022), which explores the relevance of the parallel  between quantum physics and Eastern philosophy for navigating the uncertainty of the pandemic and post-pandemic world, and a chapter titled ‘Experiments in Entangled Time,’ which appeared in a physics collection on Quantum Entanglement (ed. Oliver Baker, OpenTech). She was co-investigator, with Nicola Mackay, of a three-year project (2020-23), titled Mapping the Empire: The Contemporary Legacy of Historical Trauma and Forced Displacement.


Jay L. Garfield, Smith College, USA
Jay L. Garfield is Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Buddhist Studies at Smith College, Visiting Professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School, Professor of Philosophy at Melbourne University and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. Academicinfluence.com has identified him as one of the 50 most influential philosophers in the world over the past decade.

Garfield’s research addresses topics in the foundations of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind; metaphysics; the history of modern Indian philosophy; topics in ethics, epistemology and the philosophy of logic; the philosophy of the Scottish enlightenment methodology in cross-cultural interpretation; and topics in Buddhist philosophy, particularly Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka and Yogācāra. He is the author or editor of over 30 books and over 200 articles, chapters, and reviews.


Amanda Gefter, Science writer and author
Amanda Gefter is an award-winning science writer and author of Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn. Her work has appeared in Nautilus, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York TImes, and Quanta, among other publications. She was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and studied the history and philosophy of science at the London School of Economics.

 


William Hubbard, University of Chicago, USA
William H. J. Hubbard is Deputy Dean and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. Both a lawyer and an economist, he teaches and writes on litigation, courts, and civil procedure. He is the author of the casebook Civil Procedure: An Integrated Approach (2021) and is co-author of Court on Trial: A Data-Driven Account of the Supreme Court of India (2023). He is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and has been Editor of the Journal of Legal Studies since 2013.


Christopher McIntosh, Bard College, USA
Christopher McIntosh is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Bard College and the author of The Time of Global Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and the co-editor of Time, Temporality, and Global Politics (e-IR, 2016). His research takes a critical approach to security politics, broadly speaking, and his research interests include time and temporality, war, political violence, quantum social theory and the ethics of scholarship. His work appears in International Studies Quarterly, International Theory, Journal of Global Security Studies, Security Dialogue, International Relations, International Studies Review, Global Studies Quarterly and Millennium, among others. His writing has also appeared in venues such as Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and The Disorder of Things. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in political science, an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown and an A.B at the University of Georgia.


Catarina Pinto Moreira, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Dr. Catarina is a computer and data scientist. She is an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and she is currently working on new algorithms for Bayesian Structure Learning and Causal Discovery. She is a Lead Research Scientist on Project THRIVE, which aims to identify causal pathways leading to school dropouts among Australian students.

In addition to her work in causal discovery, Dr. Moreira is a leading researcher in the field of quantum cognition. She has pioneered the development of quantum-like Bayesian networks, innovative models that harness quantum interference effects to simulate human cognitive processes intricately. Currently, she is collaborating with Charles University to explore the application of these quantum-like models in the realm of political decision-making, further extending the impact of her research into new interdisciplinary areas.


Emmanuel Pothos, University of London, UK
Emmanuel studied physics for his first degree at Imperial College (graduating in 1995) and experimental psychology for his PhD at Oxford University (graduating in 1998). He has been working as a cognitive psychologist since 1998, using a variety of mathematical tools, including psychological spaces, information theory, and, more recently, quantum theory. He is currently a professor at the Department of Psychology, City, University of London. Emmanuel has been part of the so-called quantum cognition research programme since its inception, about 15 years ago, and has contributed approximately 30 related journal articles to this programme (his publication record is about 130 journal articles). He has been teaching about this innovative approach to understanding decision biases in his rationality course, which is part of an MSc in Behavioural Economics, at City. 


Paavo Pylkkänen, University of Helsinki, Finland and University of Skövde, Sweden
Paavo Pylkkänen, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy and Director of the Bachelor’s Program in Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Working as Vice Dean for Research in 2018-2020 he had the main responsibility for developing the new profiling area Mind and Matter: Foundations of Information, Intelligence and Consciousness for the University of Helsinki. His main research areas are philosophy of mind, philosophy of physics and their intersection. Pylkkänen has explored whether the problem of consciousness can be tackled in the framework of the new holistic and dynamic worldview that is emerging from quantum theory and relativity. He has in particular been inspired by the physicists David Bohm and Basil Hiley’s interpretation of quantum theory and has collaborated with both of them.  He is also Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Sweden, where he initiated a Consciousness Studies Program.


Mark Salter, University of Ottawa, Canada
Mark B. Salter is a full professor at the School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa. He was the 2014 Canadian Political Science Association Teaching Excellence Prize winner. In 2007, he was the recipient of the National Capital Educator’s Award and the Excellence in Education Prize at the University of Ottawa. In autumn 2008, he was Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, Wolfson College, and Visiting Scholar at the Centre of International Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is editor of “Making Things International 1” and “Making Things International 2,” “Research Methods in Critical Security Studies” with Can E. Mutlu, “Politics at the Airport,” as well as special issues on “Border Security as Practice,” “Critical Security Studies in Canada,” and the Forums of International Political Sociology. Salter is Editor “Security Dialogue.”


Michael SchnabelMichael Schnabel, Vanderbilt University, USA
Michael Schnabel is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He applies methods and ideas from theoretical physics and computational neuroscience to model collective decision-making and information processing in social systems. His current research topics include opinion formation and cognitive models of decision-making, as well as quantum-like models to describe seemingly irrational aspects in human decision making. He can be reached at michael.schnabel@vanderbilt.edu.


Jakub TesařJakub Tesař, Charles University, Prague

Jakub Tesař is an assistant professor at Charles University in Prague. His research is focused on possible applications of quantum theory in the social sciences, namely the decision-making in the political (survey effects) and strategic context (game theory). He is interested in relational (as opposed to individual) ontologies and the notion of quantum ethics. Jakub’s other work is centered on questions of global environmental politics.

Joyce WangJoyce Wang, The Ohio State University, USA
Zheng Joyce Wang (Ph.D. in Communications & Cognitive Science, Indiana University-Bloomington, 2007) is a Professor in the School of Communication, Translational Data Analytics Institute, and Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the Ohio State University. One of her research foci is to study how people process and use media. Another research focus is to understand contextual influences on decision, cognition, and communication by building new probabilistic and dynamic systems based upon quantum rather than classical probability theory. She is Associate Editor for Journal of Communication and for Computers in Human Behavior. Her research has been continuously supported by U.S. National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense in the past decade. She is named a Fellow of the International Communication Association in 2021.


Alexander WendtAlexander Wendt, The Ohio State University, USA
Alexander Wendt is Professor of Political Science at the Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, and taught at Yale University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Chicago before moving to OSU in 2004. His research focuses on philosophical aspects of world politics, and he is well known in his field of international relations for several important articles and his 1999 book, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge UP), which won the International Studies Association’s award for “Best Book of the Decade” in 2006. Wendt’s interests have since pivoted to the possibility of quantum consciousness and its implications for social science, on which he has published several papers as well as a 2015 book, Quantum Mind and Social Science (Cambridge).