Ne\u015fe Devenot delivered four invited talks during the Spring 2026 semester, each of which reflected a distinct aspect of their recent work in Critical Psychedelic Studies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On March 5, Devenot delivered an invited \u201cdose\u201d (extended presentation) at the \u201cTrip Out! Symposium on Media and Altered States<\/u><\/a>\u201d at the University of Toronto Mississauga\u2019s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology. Organized by Kate Maddalena and Daniel Guadagnolo, the symposium examined the \u201ctrip\u201d\u2014a timespace marked by shifts in perception through virtual reality, drug consumption, meditation, and other technologies of altered consciousness\u2014bringing together scholars whose work explores perception as technological affordance and reality as already-altered, mediated experience. The event was structured around thematic \u201ctrips\u201d featuring \u201ctheory pills\u201d from graduate students and longer \u201cdoses\u201d from invited guests. Devenot\u2019s presentation, \u201cForm as Pharmakon: Psychedelic Poetics as Emancipatory Pedagogy,\u201d explored how literary and rhetorical forms can counter corporate capture of psychedelic discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 28, Devenot presented at \u201cReligion and Psychedelics: Critical, Cross-Cultural, Cross-Disciplinary Approaches<\/u><\/a>,\u201d a conference jointly organized by The Ohio State University\u2019s Center for the Study of Religion and the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education. The conference brought together Indigenous practitioners, scientists, and scholars to examine relationships between psychedelics and religion amid the so-called \u201cPsychedelic Renaissance.\u201d On a panel with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine\u2019s David Yaden, Devenot presented \u201cFelt Sense or False Signals?: The Challenge of Implicit Bias for \u2018Embodied Presence\u2019 in Psychedelic Therapy.\u201d This talk examined how prominent training organizations teach psychedelic facilitators to non-verbally \u201cread\u201d clients\u2019 needs through relational somatic resonance, which is empirically unsupported and creates risks of abuse in psychedelic therapy settings. It can be viewed on YouTube under the title \u201cTelepathy in Psychedelic Therapy<\/u><\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n