Luminary: Edward Kelly

Luminary: Edward Kelly

Edward F. Kelly, Ph.D. is currently Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatric Medicine at the University of Virginia. He is author of Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, Computer Recognition of English Word Senses and Altered States of Consciousness and Psi: An Historical Survey and Research Prospectus. His central long term interests revolve around mind-brain relations and functional neuroimaging studies of unusual states of consciousness and associated cognitive phenomena.

Dr. Kelly received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Yale and a PhD from Harvard with primary interests in psycholinguistics and cognitive science. His research, carried out at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill as part of a large neuroscience research program, involved non-invasive study of normal and abnormal plasticity in human somatosensory cortex using high-resolution EEG and fMRI techniques. He had previously spent over ten years working full-time in experimental parapsychology, initially at J. B. Rhine’s Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, NC, and subsequently through the Department of Electrical Engineering at Duke University.