About Me
Dr David Luke is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Greenwich, UK, where he has been teaching an undergraduate course on the Psychology of Exceptional Human Experience since 2009, and he is also Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, and Lecturer on the MSc Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology for Alef Trust and Liverpool John Moores University. 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 ten books, most recently Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (2nd ed., 2019).
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 at the Institute of Ecotechnics, London, and is a cofounder and director of Breaking Convention: International Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness. He has given over 350 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. He lives life on the edge, of Sussex.
David has a BSc in Psychology (1st class – University of Westminster, UK), a TESOL certificate (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages - University of Westminster, UK), a Diploma in Parapsychology (Institute of Parapsychology, Rhine Research Centre, NC, USA), a PhD in psychology (University of Northampton, UK), and a PGCertHE (teaching qualification - University of Greenwich). His doctoral thesis was entitled “The psychology and parapsychology of beliefs about luck and their relation to beliefs about psi and psi performance”.
David is a founder and director of Breaking Convention, an educational charity focusing on psychedelic research, and he was Chair 2017-2019. Between 2011 and 2019 he co-organised 5 editions of Breaking Convention: A Multidsciplinary Meeting on Psychedelic Consciousness at the Univeristy of Kent, and the University of Greenwich, respectively.
His research and writing often explores the overlap between research into parapsychology, psychopharmacology, anthropology and magical beliefs, such as shamanism, or more generally the junction of anomalous experiences and altered states fo consciousnes.
Between 2009-2011 he was elected President of the Parapsychological Association and was co-opted to the Council of the Society for Psychical Research in 2009. Currently he is Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Greenwich, London, where he was given the Early Career Research Excellence Award and the Inspriational Teahcing Award. He is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
For further details and publications see:
https://gre.academia.edu/DavidLuke
https://www.gre.ac.uk/people/rep/faculty-of-education-and-health/dr-david-luke