Summary

Comparative religion scholar at Rice University who founded the Archives of the Impossible - one of the world's largest academic repositories of UAP, paranormal, and contact research materials, including the archives of John Mack, Whitley Strieber, and CIA remote viewing director Ed May. His books and institutional work argue that extraordinary human experiences of contact and non-ordinary reality demand a new epistemology that neither dismisses nor literalizes them.

Roles

• -J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought, Rice University
• -Co-Director, Center for Theory and Research, Esalen Institute
• -Founder and Director, Archives of the Impossible, Rice University

Organizations

Education

• -PhD, History of Religions, University of Chicago
• -BA, Philosophy and Theology, Benedictine College

Early Career

• -Taught at Harvard Divinity School and Westminster College (Oxford) before joining Rice University
• -Early scholarship focused on Hindu tantra and Ramakrishna, establishing credentials in comparative religion before pivoting toward the study of extraordinary human experience