UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, University of California, Berkeley

The Dana Foundation supports a Civic Science Fellowship through a grant to the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP). With renewed interest in using psychedelics to treat various mental illnesses, there is a growing need to understand how these drugs work and how diverse people interact with them. BCSP’s mission is to ensure that psychedelics are investigated for the benefit of all and that findings are shared with all through civic engagement. The Fellow conducts multidirectional engagement with diverse publics to explore questions relevant to enabling the full breadth of society to actively and safely engage with psychedelic science. Topics include the impact of psychedelic science on societal issues such as mental health classification, diagnosis, and treatment, and how best to integrate indigenous and underground use-based knowledge of psychedelics.  

The Civic Science Fellowships align with the Dana Frontiers objectives to pilot innovative multidirectional engagement opportunities to embed community perspectives in research, policy, and decision-making and to support and empower neuroscience and society practitioners who champion inclusive, effective models of multidirectional engagement with diverse publics.