Funder: Harvard University
Due Dates (Anticipated): February 2027 (Application deadline)
Funding Amounts: Likely $1,000–$100,000, depending on project scope and scale
Summary: Supports Harvard researchers’ projects exploring psychedelics through humanistic inquiry into their historical, cultural, and societal significance.
Key Information: Applicants must maintain a Harvard affiliation throughout the funding period.
Description
The Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture funds projects by Harvard undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty that deepen understanding of psychedelics and their significance for human experience. Rather than clinical investigation, the program supports work at the intersection of psychedelics and humanistic inquiry, examining their multiple histories, cultural contexts, and roles across societies and geographies.
The initiative welcomes questions about meaning, creativity, consciousness, transcendence, death, ceremony, and tradition. Its interests also include psychedelics’ influence on art, music, religion, literature, and film; their relationship to social and cultural change; and ethical questions involving cultural appropriation, reciprocity, and commodification. It is a cooperative initiative between Harvard and UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics and Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry.
