Our Team

Dr Adam SAFRON, PhD

Most of Adam’s work has focused on characterizing the nature of preferences and motivation from mechanistic, developmental, and evolutionary perspectives. He has also studied the effects of brief mindfulness interventions on cognition and well-being. While conducting this research, he developed a neurophenomenological model of sensory absorption and ecstatic states via neural entrainment, which eventually led to developing a synthetic theory of consciousness attempting to integrate across seemingly conflicting perspectives. More recently he has proposed an account of embodied agency and free will, and is currently working on a unified mechanistic account of psychedelics. He is also involved in an ongoing research program to characterize ways that different forms of psychological flexibility might correlate with the dynamic character of brain networks, and possibly also physiological signals such as heart rate variability. Across all this work, Adam’s ultimate purpose is exploring how individuals can be adaptive, creative, and free in all aspects of their lives.


Ana TAJADURA-JIMÉNEZ, PhD

Ana Tajadura-Jiménez (Principal Investigator) studied Telecommunications Engineering at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. She obtained an MSc degree in Digicom and a PhD degree in Applied Acoustics, both at  Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. Ana was post-doctoral researcher in the Lab of Action and Body (LAB) at Royal Holloway, University of London. In 2012 she moved to University College London Interaction Centre (UCLIC) as an ESRC Future Research Leader and as principal investigator of the project The Hearing Body. Since 2016 Ana has been a Ramón y Cajal research fellow, first based at Universidad Loyola Andalucía, and currently at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She is also an Honorary Research Associate at UCLIC. Ana coordinates the research line  “Multisensory stimulation to alter the perception of body and space, emotion and motor behavior.” Her research is empirical and multidisciplinary, combining perspectives of psychoacoustics, neuroscience and HCI.


Alex GALVEZ-POL, PhD

Alex is a cognitive Neuroscientist in the Psychology Department of the University of the Balearic Islands. He is also collaborating with the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London.
Alex studies the interaction between the body and the brain. He examines the effect of our bodily organs, such as the heart, on the way we perceive and act upon the world (Interoception). Further, he develops new paradigms and methods by using various techniques.


Dr Anna CIAUNICA, PhD

Dr Anna Ciaunica is a Principal Investigator at the Centre for Philosophy of Science, Faculty of Science, University of Lisbon, Portugal; and Research Associate at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, the UK. Before that she was Research Associate at the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London; and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She obtained her PhD from the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France.

Anna is currently PI on three interdisciplinary projects looking at the relationship between self-awareness, embodiment and social interactions in humans and artificial agents. Her approach is highly interdisciplinary, using methods from philosophy, experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, phenomenology and arts. More recently, Anna has deepened the concept of minimal selfhood in utero developing as a process of co-embodiment and co-homeostasis. Apart from the numerous scientific papers published, Anna is currently working on a book: ‘From Cells to Selves: the Co-Embodied Roots of Human Self-Consciousness’.

She is also coordinator of the Network for Embodied Consciousness, Technology and the Arts (NECTArs) – a collaborative platform bringing together artists, researchers, stakeholders, policy makers and people with lived experiences, aiming at fostering creative solutions to timely questions such as self-consciousness and (dis)embodiment in our hyper-digitalized and hyper-connected world.


Liberty SEVERS, MSc

Liberty is a PhD student and fellow on the Interself project at CFCUL. Her research is deeply interdisciplinary, and works on topics at the intersection of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience. The primary focus of her research is on theoretical and empirical issues within consciousness science, including the explanatory scope of the Bayesian brain hypothesis, embodied cognition and the social dimensions of the self. She uses a combination of novel methods and technologies to interrogate these topics, such as virtual-reality and sensor-based wearables, computational modelling, eye-tracking and neuroimaging techniques.


Alberto COLOMBO, Bsc

With a background in agro-environmental science, Alberto is currently a Master’s student in Cognitive Science at University of Lisbon. He is working on a thesis about depersonalization and the connection between the bodily self and the narrative self. His aim is to assess whether and to which extent the disruption of the sense of self observed in depersonalization also involves the narrative aspects of individuals’ identity and how these are intertwined with body representations.