I won the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition for "The Mythology of Conscious AI" - read it now in Noema.
Scientist, Author, Speaker
The science of consciousness
Understanding the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the great challenges for 21st Century Science. Check out my essay The Mythology of Conscious AI, which won the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition.
A 2021 Book of the Year (New Statesman, Economist, Bloomberg, Five Books), a 2021 Science Book of the Year (Guardian, Financial Times). Being You is out now in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audio.
Interviews and conversations.
Academic and public engagement projects.
What’s coming up and what’s happened.
Consciousness at TED
Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
My main-stage TED talk has more than 15 million views.
The call for commentary proposals for my new paper 'Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism' is now open at BBS. Deadline is June 12th.
"Inside the big bet on consciousness". My take on the adversarial collaboration between two consciousness theories, in Nautilus.
What gives meaning to life? I asked my Mum .. in today's Guardian (along with 14 others)
"A science of consciousness beyond pseudo-science and pseudo-consciousness" Our comment (Àlex Gómez-Marin & me) on the IIT clash; out now in Nature Neuroscience.
I'm delighted to make the Clarivate 'Highly Cited' researcher list, for the fifth year running - along with 5 other Sussex academics:
New paper in PLoS Biology on the ethics of brain-computer interfaces for cognitive enhancment - with Emma Gordon.
This is an unmissable conversation. It may be my favourite of the series so far.
Renowned philosopher and psychiatrist @dr_mcgilchrist delves into consciousness, brains and spirituality (as well as opening up about his recent embrace of Christian faith) in a conversation with
It’s a real pleasure and privilege to be here at @mesec_ for the 2026 spring school. A brilliant bunch of people and super-well organised 👇🏽
🎉 Day 1 of the Winter School is complete!
We kicked things off with our chair @anilkseth, diving into the big questions of consciousness.
Participants, tutors, and the chair already mixing and getting to know each other.
Off to a week of ideas and great discussions. ☀️
@IBROorg
Last chance to see @missSukiChan's brilliant #Conscious at @cphdox - tonight (24/3), 19:15 at the Empire Bio, Copenhagen. This is a special additional screening laid on due to popular demand - don't miss it! .@aconitedocs .@SandboxScience