Gerhard Mayer: Open the Field - Broaden the Horizon

Published by

Parapsychological Association on Thursday, February 3, 2022

On Friday, February 25, 2022 at 2pm Eastern (US), the PA will host an online invited address presented by Gerhard Mayer, winner of the 2021 Outstanding Contribution Award.

Dr. Mayer will offer general reflections on parapsychology as our field of research, drawing also on his own biographical experiences as a researcher. His reflections are inspired by the growing awareness of the need to consider and value diversity in society, which currently dominates many areas of the public sphere.

However, he does not intend a political call for diversity with his talk. The question of political diversity led him to the question of content diversity - or diversity of thinking. To this end, Dr. Mayer takes up a powerful metaphor by the African author Tsitsi Dangaremba, which she used in her speech about thinking styles and their impact on behavior towards the world and other cultures given on the awarding of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade: the metaphor of Jonah in the belly of the “whale of our paradigms”.

Dr. Mayer will make a plea to critically examine our own habits and research paradigms to which we are committed, and to allow for new perspectives by playfully engaging with different models of thinking about and understanding the world. This leads us almost inevitably back to promoting diversity in our own discipline.

Gerhard Mayer is well known for his novel contributions to anomalistics and his role as chief editor of the Journal of Anomalistics / Zeitschrift für Anomalistik. He has been working as a research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP) in Freiburg/Germany since 1996. His research interests include sleep paralysis, astrology, magical practices, neoshamanism, and the biographical importance & integration of extraordinary experiences as well as methods of anomalistic research. He is also the acting director of the Gesellschaft für Anomalistik, a German sister organization of the Society for Scientific Exploration.

Dr. Mayer's address will be live-streamed to both the PA's YouTube channel and to Facebook. However, PA members get free VIP access to the Airmeet space where the event is taking place (PA members: check your email for the link).

If you'd like join us behind the scenes, become a PA member today!

Published In: News

The Parapsychological Association is an international professional organization of scientists and scholars engaged in the study of psi (or 'psychic') experiences, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and precognition. First established in 1957, the PA has been an affiliated organization of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1969.

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