If a roomful of college kids puking into a bowl sounds like a bad Ayahuasca joke about the early days of viral internet videos, rest assured you are not alone. It turns out that Athabasca offers entry into researching just such realms–academically, that is!
Here presents a Research Assistant opportunity whereby cultural appropriation is properly assessed within the modern medical paradigm of disease pathology and medical intervention. Countless people in recent years, facing this or that trauma or circumstance or curiosity, have sought dramatic improvements through psychoactive substances. This leads to a “stereotypical, reified, and even harmful aesthetic representations of the psychedelic plants, fungi, people, and their associated contexts.” While the feelings of the plants themselves might transcend our personal epistemological milieu, only a few decades ago magic mushrooms were more the stuff of teenage adventure, and dicey legal risk-taking, where now research implies that psilocybin along with other “wacky trips” can actually solve mental health problems.
With this changing backdrop in mind, the RAO seeks to utilize Varella’s enactivity theory – in this RAO’s concept of discovering, or, rather, enacting new “assemblages” betwixt self and surroundings, organism and substrate.
But you don’t have to take my clumsy summary at face value, if the realm of authentic interplay, if not to say literal discourse, between oneself and one’s environment piques your academic interest, please contact Dr. Keith Williams at mailto:kwilliams@athabascau.ca. Do include a cover letter, resume, unofficial transcript and contact details for one or two references. Besides avid interest, the other prerequisite for this job is a “prior credential or expertise in a field relevant to this study such as anthropology, philosophy, environmental studies, herbalism.” Good luck!