Philosophy, history of science & the study of dreaming

Philosophy & Research

Marieke McKenna trained as a philosopher and historian of science. Her research moves between metaphysics, phenomenology, consciousness studies and philosophies of nature, and she is particularly known for her work on dreaming and altered states of consciousness.

Photo: Danique van Kesteren

Research

2022–2024

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science & Donders Institute

Lead researcher, History of Lucid Dreaming Research: An Interdisciplinary Oral History

The first oral-historical examination of how lucid dreaming became an object of scientific inquiry. Funded by a Die Junge Akademie grant for outstanding emerging researchers, with laboratory training in the Donders Institute’s neuroscience sleep laboratory (EEG and fMRI research on the dreaming brain).

Interviewed more than forty researchers in the field and presented at conferences in Arizona, Hamburg, Berlin and Bern.

2017–2018

Isis, journal of the History of Science Society

Junior editor, book reviews

Selected books for review and managed the reviewing process for one of the leading peer-reviewed journals in the history of science (University of Chicago Press).

2018

Foundations: 19th UK & European Conference on the Philosophy of Physics

Organising committee

An interdisciplinary conference in Utrecht with a public lecture by Nobel laureate Sir Roger Penrose.

From the cabinetimages I return to

A seated figure with a radiant sun for a head, holding a flower, in a green landscape — *Clavis Artis*, alchemical manuscript attributed to ‘Zoroaster’, Germany, late 17th or early 18th century. Biblioteca Civica Attilio Hortis, Trieste.

Teaching

2025–

Advaya, London

Course creator & teacher

Dreams: How to enrich your waking life through your dreams, a six-module course for a learning platform with more than 100,000 subscribers. The modules: The Dreaming Brain; The History of Western Psychology & Psychoanalysis; Dream Cultures I and II; Lucid Dreaming; and Dreamtech.

With Saelyx Finna, the webinar Dream Technology: the emerging technologies that interface with, and sometimes aim to alter, the dreaming mind, their ethics and the industry behind them, with a do-it-yourself dream-tech protocol to try at home.

2017–2025

Abbey Road Institute Amsterdam

Head teacher

Taught business, creative entrepreneurship, artist development and creative direction, and coached students through their business plans. Guest lecturer at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Codarts, ArtEZ and Wisseloord Studios.

Dream culturesimages from the research

A stack of books on dreaming and the unconscious, by Jung, LaBerge and others, beside two lit candles in the dark

A Tibetan painting: a sage and his consort fly above a great flood, while a figure standing in the water raises his arm to halt it — *Mahasiddha Ghantapa and the Great Flood*, Tibet, 18th century. Tempera on cloth. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

A Tibetan mural: a seated yogi seen from behind, a flame rising from the crown of his head along a stream of light towards a Buddha in a circle — Yogic practices of consciousness and dream, mural (detail), Lukhang Temple, Lhasa, late 17th century.

Lectures

Lectures, workshops and lecture-performances are listed under Public Speaking & Hosting.

Study

2019–2023Utrecht UniversityResearch MSc History and Philosophy of Science · history of the natural sciences, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of space and time, the quantum world, German idealism, animal consciousness and the history of dream research
2014University of GlasgowErasmus exchange · geology and mineralogy, mysticism and spirituality in religious studies, and consciousness in cognitive science and neuroscience
2012–2015University of AmsterdamBA Philosophy · aesthetics, logic, philosophy of science and mathematics, neurophilosophy, Chinese Buddhism, astrophysics and cosmology, and Kierkegaard and Blake

In conversation

Interviews on dreams, consciousness and inner space, for Mangu.TV, Initiations, The World Needs Creatives and Follow the Mushroom, are gathered under Interviews & podcasts.