Sacred substances, Social Worlds: Psychedelics Across Cultures
- Submission status
- Open
- Submission deadline
Sacred substances, Social Worlds: Psychedelics Across Cultures is a cross-journal Collection led collaboratively by Humanities & Social Sciences Communications and Scientific Reports, bringing together research from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to examine how psychedelics and entheogens shape human experience, social organisation, and biological systems.
Humanities & Social Sciences Communications welcomes research exploring how these substances influence collective behaviour, identity formation, narrative frameworks, authority structures, and social organisation. Submissions may address historical and contemporary uses, regulatory and political contexts, public perceptions, and the ways altered states shape communication, meaning-making, and group cohesion. Both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are welcome.
Scientific Reports invites studies investigating the mechanisms through which psychedelics and entheogens modulate perception, cognition, emotion, and physiological processes. Submissions may address receptor-level pharmacology, neural circuit dynamics, metabolic pathways, molecular signalling, or structure–activity relationships. Research using imaging techniques, behavioural models, or systems-level analysis is also encouraged.
By integrating sociocultural perspectives from the Humanities & Social Sciences Communications portfolio with mechanistic insight from Scientific Reports, Sacred substances, Social Worlds: Psychedelics Across Cultures aims to advance a nuanced, interdisciplinary understanding of the roles and impacts of entheogens and psychedelics across human contexts and biological systems.
