Contemplative Collaboration: A vision for a mindful academic culture

Collaboration is found to be abundant in nature and indispensable in human culture, including academic research in both humanities and sciences. However, in academia and society we often find ourselves trapped in runaway competition, with potentially harmful consequences for individuals, humanity and our planet, even in the midst of our imminent ecological crisis. What is missing from the bigger picture?

Drawing inspiration from physics research communities at CERN and from the growing body of research in the field of Contemplative Science, we are co-creating a „Contemplative Collaboration“ to move toward a mindful academic culture. Our intention is to develop a holistic support system rooted in shared values and ethics that empowers scholars and researchers to engage in dedicated contemplative practice, conduct rigorous research, explore the surrounding issues in the social and cultural context, participate in skillful community-building, and amplify each other’s work through collaborative coopetition. Together we are building a perspective of interdependence that counters prevailing cultural narratives of scarcity and separateness and facilitates inter- and transdisciplinary research to meet the urgent individual and collective crises that humanity faces today. We invite researchers from humanities and sciences and other interested parties to help shape the pathways to creating a robust and values-aligned, mindful and contemplative research collaboration, community and culture.

Wolfgang Lukas, PhD is a physicist from Graz, Austria, who has been a member of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN from 2010-2017. He is the founder of the Contemplative Scientific Collaboration project.