Hello Breakero,
We are feeling the anticipation rising by the day as more and more tickets sell, with over a thousand people already booked to attend. All of our previous conferences have sold out in advance, so get your tickets while you can!
The exact timetable is under final construction this week; we will share it with you very shortly. Meanwhile, please find below a list of talks from those people who answered the call for papers and were successfully selected out of nearly 300 applications! Huge gratitude to all, for their commitment to this area of research and their willingness to share the fruits of their labour with the wider world.
Details of our invited speakers and their talks can be found posted to our social media accounts, Instagram and Facebook alike.
Invited speakers
Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, Darren Le Baron, Tom O'Neill, Julie Holland, Simon Ruffell, Matthew David Segall, Erik Davis, John Constable aka John Crow, Tehseen Noorani, Nzambe Divanga, Mustapha Khan, Neil Woods, Jor'el McQueen, Tim Read, Maria Papaspyrou, Shannon Dames & Phillip Dames, Jeronimo Mazarrasa, Luis Eduardo Luna, Susan Blackmore, Rick Doblin, Moudou Baqui, Zoë Garbett, Jamie Wheal, Bruce Damer, William Leonard Pickard, Kat Harrison.
Whilst conference tickets are currently still available, on-site accommodation has now sold out. Exeter city has many other accommodation options, although I’d advise booking soon as it is Easter weekend. Public transport into campus is your best way to arrive (if possible) as the parking can get a bit crowded.
To answer a few questions we are receiving right now:
We do not currently have plans to sell day tickets.
We do not offer refunds, but our approved ticket resale partner Tixel is an excellent and safe site to find a buyer. Take a look there if you need a ticket!
The conference will be held on the 17-19th April 2025, at the University of Exeter hilltop Streatham campus. Talks start at midday Thursday, allowing time beforehand for registration, and an invitation to attend our opening ceremony in the Great Hall at 11:00am. On other days the talks begin at 09:30, and finish every day at 18:30. We will open registration on Wednesday 4-7pm. There will be something entertaining happening that night for you to attend!
The next newsletters will bring you details of the Cinema programme, the Installations rooms, and the Workshops. Oh and a preview of our exciting evening entertainment programme! Including a book launch, in-depth panel discussion sessions, psychedelic stories and music, and Friday night’s epic extravanganza, the Psychedelic Cabaret show!!!
And, if you like, you can integrate the three days of experience by moving your body to the sounds of the DJs at our afterparty, in the on-campus Lemon Grove nightclub venue. Admission is included as part of the overall conference admission, please note that this event is for conference attendees only; you cannot get a separate ticket to this night.
So here’s what you’ve been waiting for, the heart of the conference, the submitted speaker line-up (with more TBA!).
On behalf of the BC team,
Nikki Wyrd
Any questions or feedback to info@breakingconvention.co.uk
Submitted Speakers at Breaking Convention 2025
Amanda Guzinska: Beyond the Peak: The Vital Role of Aftercare in Psychedelic Retreats
Amelie Barbier: Talking with ‘v’apaq’: conceptions and uses of fly agaric in a Koryak village (Kamchatka, Russian Far East)
Andy Letcher: ‘When time becomes a loop’: contemporary accounts of fly agaric use
Andy Roberts: Britain’s Clandestine LSD Chemists
Anne Mathie: Eastern Contemplative Traditions and Psychedelic Integration: Pathways to Wholeness
Anne Rossignol: A psychedelic journey to Recovery and Individuation
Annette Kaye: Psychedelics meet Christianity
Anton Gomez-Escolar: Psychedelic Drugs for Addiction Treatment: Past, Present and Future
Ashleigh Murphy-Beiner: Navigating New Memories of Child Abuse in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Avi Esther: Fairy Medicine: The Iconic Fly Agaric’s Use Medicinally and Ceremonially
Caroline Hayes: Cornutopia: A short story and what it can tell us about ethnic minority views on psychedelic research, and the potential impact on clinical outcomes
Chad Charles: The Value of Dissociation: Integrating Peak Experiences into Trauma-Informed Approaches with 5-MeO-DMT
Chara Caruthers: The Sacred Art of Presence: What Space Holders Can Teach Us About Transformative Psychedelic Practice
Christelle Kelley and Sunil Arora: What we know now: Five Years of Medical Cannabis in the UK
Christine Hauskeller: Directing the Experience: Music in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Christopher Timmermann: A Middle Way Forward for Psychedelic Science and Practice: Between Experience and Biology
Daniel J Kruger: Psychedelic experiences affect sexuality, gender, and intimate relationships
Eddie Jacobs: Foregrounding the matrix in adolescent psychedelic-assisted therapy trials
Eirini K Argyri: Awakening from Normality: Psychedelics as Ontologically Diversifying Experiences
Emily Selove: Psychedelic Magic at the University of Exeter
Emily Sinclair: Dismantling the Myth of ‘Mother Ayahuasca’
Estelle Miller: Microdosing Mysteries: What is really in your psychedelics?
Francisca Silva: Psychedelic medicines in the EU
Giulio Sica: Colonising the Sacred: The Biopolitics of Psychedelic Healing and how to respond
Grace Blest-Hopley: Psychedelics and Women’s Health: Bridging the Research Gap
Iain Jordan: What Did Clinical Trials Teach Us About Mitigating Risks in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy?
Ido Hartogsohn: Psychedelic hormesis: the transformative potential of pain and discomort, and the perils of experiential sterilization
Isis Koutrouli: Psilocybin's Effects on Extinction Learning and Distinct Reinstatement Paradigms in a Cocaine Self-Administration Model
Itamar Zadoff: Revolutionizing with Antiquity: Glocalized Ayahuasca Rituals in Japan and Israel
Iyad El-Baghdadi: A Testimony of Faith: A Personal Journey with Psychedelics and Islam.
Jake Singer (Navajo Elder) / Alfredo Carrillo Salvador (Wixarika Elder) / Santiago Alonso (Wixarika Advisor) / Matthew Schroeder (Navajo Advisor): Protecting the Peyote: a way of life. A hour long dialogue between indigenous tribes from México and United States.
Jeffrey Breau: Reimagining Religion: The Case of Novel Psychedelic Spiritual Communities
Joel Brierre: A Collaborative Approach to 5-MeO-DMT Research
Joelle Adams and Dan Moore: Integrating Exceptional Experiences: Psychedelics, NDEs, and Lucid Dreaming
Katie Treble: A Hope in Hell: MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD in frontline workers
Leor Roseman: How Psychedelic Spread: The Sociopolitical Dynamics of Psychedelic Diffusion
Leyla Hussein: Compassionate Care: The "Do No Harm" Model for Ethical Psychedelic Therapy in Marginalised Communities
Lidia M Stoica: The Potential Use of Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy as a Desistance-Focused Intervention for Offenders
Lizzy Fleming: Play, Neuroplasticity and the Psychedelic Mirror
Maria Bălăeţ: Drugs and limits of human intelligence
Martin Gisby: The Psychedelic Therapies Reimbursement Challenge
Mattha Busby: Reporting on the dark side of psychedelic healing
Matthew Clark: Yogic trance (samādhi), no breathing and tryptamine
Max Crosland-Wood: Ayahuasca's Impact on Military Veterans with PTSD in a Traditional Framework—Insights from a 6-Month Follow-up Study
Michael Fine: Jehohuasca—Ultra Orthodox Jews drinking Ayahuasca
Michael Hauty: initiative Rules: Navigating the Path between Hype and Promise in Oregon
Naina Gupta: Mapping Unitive States
Pascal Michael: How to ground the psychedelic UFO: The pivotal potential of exceptional experience, from spiritual risk to ecology of practice
Patricia Song: Working with Erotic Feelings in Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
Rayyan Zafar: Psychedelics Industry UK: The UKs first and only Psychedelics trade association
Ricarda Evens: PTSD as a Potential Post-Psychedelic Complication? Results from an International Online Survey
Rich Tyo: It’s a Gateway, After All! Is Cannabis the psychedelic glue that can connect the psychedelic field back together?
Robert Dickins: Power, Psychedelics & the Sublime
Rosalind McAlpine: A Collaborative Approach to 5-MeO-DMT Research
Ruth Vassilas: Embodied Existence after Psychedelic (and other Spiritually Transformative) Experiences
Samuli Kangaslampi: Can you really remember your birth on LSD? Memory experiences under psychedelics
Sean Goldy: Different guides, different effects? Examining variance across session facilitators on psilocybin's acute subjective effects in 10 clinical trials.
Shanna Marrinan: What's stopping NHS prescribing of medical cannabis? An economic evaluation of medical cannabis
Shayam Suseelan: The Neural Correlates of Simple Visual Hallucinations
Tobias Buchborn: Research on the thalamocortical filter hypothesis of psychedelic drug action
Henry Fisher: Balancing Scientific Integrity, Business Viability, and Patient Outcomes
Vanessa Milagro Leon-Sulca: Why Should the Psychedelic Movement Consider the Impact of Historical Trauma from Colonization?