Humans have been using psychedelic substances for thousands of years, yet scholars have yet to account for their role in human cultures across space and time. This lecture analyses the imbrication of psychedelic drugs and human culture, from the mystery cults of the ancient world to postwar hippie culture, the boom in ayahuasca tourism, and today’s “Psychedelic Renaissance.”

We’re very pleased to welcome Dr. J. Christian Greer, a scholar of Religious Studies whose research explores psychedelic culture, spirituality, and Western esotericism. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and the University of Amsterdam, he has held teaching and research positions at Harvard, Yale, and now Stanford, where his work continues to bridge academic scholarship with contemporary conversations around psychedelics. From developing the Harvard Psychedelic Walking Tour to publishing books on pilgrimage, counterculture, and psychedelic history, Dr. Greer has become an important voice in the study of religion and consciousness today.

Programme structure:

Location: CREA 
15:45 Walk-in 
16:00 - 17:00 Lecture
17:00 - 17:15 Q&A and moving to Crea Café for drinks

From the Golden Age's revolutionary attention to everyday life, through Van Gogh's volcanic color, to the utopian abstractions of De Stijl and contemporary provocations — this lecture offers a broad sweep through one of the most consequential traditions in Western art.

Dr. Marek Wieczorek is an Associate Professor of Art History and Joff Hanauer Distinguished Professor in Western Civilization at the University of Washington, specializing in modern and contemporary art. His research and teaching focus on abstraction, the historical avant-gardes, and interdisciplinary practices, with particular interest in how artists use new media, environments, and technologies to address global, social, and ethical questions.

Programme structure:

Location: CREA 
15:45 Walk-in 
16:00 - 17:00 Lecture
17:00 - 17:15 Q&A and moving to Crea Café for drinks

Across cultures and eras, humanity has always been haunted by the Monster. Far from being mere fantasy, monsters embody cultural fears and taboos. Further, as monsters often become associated with marginalized populations, the Monster both establishes and reifies cultural boundaries of normativity, as well as perpetuates the stigmatization of the non-normative. In this sense, monsters are very real – monster theory endeavors to ask not simply what monster are, but rather what social functions they serve and what they reveal about the cultures who create and fear them. This lecture explores how the figure of the Monster has transformed from the nineteenth century to the present. Through examples such as vampires, witches, and Frankenstein’s creature, we will examine how monsters have been used as technologies of stigmatization, as well as how they have been reclaimed by marginalized and ‘monsterized’ communities as symbols of resistance, solidarity, and liberation. By tracing the changing forms and meanings of the Monster across modernity, we can consider what monsters reveal about cultural anxieties, shame, and exclusion – and what their reclamation can teach us about social change, subversion, and empowerment.

Brennan Kettelle is a PhD researcher at the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (HHP), University of Amsterdam, with prior degrees in Psychology, Gender and Cultural Studies, and Western Esotericism. Brennan's doctoral project, Her Dark Breath: Queer Currents within Nineteenth-Century Discourses on Lilith, explores the religiomythic figure Lilith and queer sexualities in art, literature, and politics. Brennan's broader work uses monster and queer theory to examine the “monstrous-queer” in esoteric traditions and queer subcultures.

Programme structure:

Location: CREA 
15:45 Walk-in 
16:00 - 17:00 Lecture
17:00 - 17:15 Q&A and moving to Crea Café for drinks

Amsterdam is often celebrated for its picturesque canals, merchant houses, and so-called Golden Age. Yet beneath the city’s familiar landscape lie histories that many residents and visitors pass every day without noticing. Drawing on more than a decade of research and public history work through Black Heritage Tours, Sites of Memory, and Mapping Slavery, cultural historian Jennifer Tosch explores how histories of slavery, colonialism, migration, and resistance remain embedded in the urban environment. The lecture examines how certain histories become visible while others remain hidden, and invites audiences to consider the role of public memory in shaping how we understand the past and ourselves.

Jennifer Tosch is the founder of Black Heritage Tours in Amsterdam, where she highlights the presence and contributions of the African Diaspora in the Netherlands: a 'hidden history' from the 17th Century forward, made visible on national landmarks, canal houses, museums and more. Jennifer also co-authored the Amsterdam Slavery Heritage Guide and was involved with the Mapping Slavery Project, a project portraying historical places relating to slavery on the map of the Dutch colonial empire. 

Programme structure:

Location: CREA 
15:45 Walk-in 
16:00 - 17:00 Lecture
17:00 - 17:15 Q&A and moving to Crea Café for drinks

Cities are complex, dynamic systems in which housing, mobility, energy, water, green space, the economy, and social wellbeing are deeply intertwined. Interventions in one domain inevitably ripple through others. A new mobility policy affects air quality, public space, and even housing prices. We often come up with isolated solutions to urban challenges, creating unintended side effects. This lecture introduces systems thinking as a way to understand and shape sustainable cities using examples from the City of Amsterdam. 

Cas Smitsmans (MA) is a sustainability professional with experience as an advisor at TheRockGroup and as a teacher at the University of Amsterdam, where he has helped develop professional education programs such as summer schools and traineeships. With a BA in Business Administration (Radboud University) and an MA in Global Business & Sustainability (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Cas supports organization, and the people within them, in steering towards more sustainable practices.
 

Programme structure:

Location: CREA 
15:45 Walk-in 
16:00 - 17:00 Lecture
17:00 - 17:15 Q&A and moving to Crea Café for drinks