CIRCE, the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative

Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He is an ISI Highly Citer Researcher and has published over 100 papers, many on the topic of how to best counter misinformation. His research is regularly featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, and the BBC and he has been described by Fast Company Design as one “four heroes who are defending digital democracy online”. He co-created the fake news game, Bad News, and regularly advises governments and social media companies on how to combat misinformation. Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE.  

https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/sander-van-der-linden

Stephan Lewandowsky is one of the world’s leading cognitive immunologists. He conducts research at the University of Bristol and has published more than 200 scholarly articles and books, including The Debunking Handbook, The COVID-19 Communication Handbook, and The Conspiracy Thinking Handbook. He explores people’s responses to misinformation and propaganda. Why do people reject well-established scientific facts? Is our online information ecosystem conducive to democracy? Professor Lewandowsky has received multiple awards for his research.

cogsciwa.com/

John is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub. His research focus is understanding and countering misinformation about climate change, with an emphasis on using critical thinking to build resilience. He co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts and Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis, as well as the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand.

https://www.monash.edu/mcccrh/people/john-cook

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. Lee's bestselling books include Post-Truth and How to Talk to a Science Denier, along with eleven other works of fiction and nonfiction. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Scientific American, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and numerous other popular venues.

https://leemcintyrebooks.com/

Claire Wardle is one of the world’s leading experts on misinformation and public health. She co-authored the foundational report Information Disorder: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy for the Council of Europe and directs the Information Futures Lab. In 2015, she co-founded the nonprofit First Draft, a pioneer in innovation, research, and practice in the field of misinformation. Over the past decade, she has developed an organization-wide training program for the BBC, been a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Media and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, and been the Research Director at the Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.  

https://vivo.brown.edu/display/cwardle

Jonathan Gottschall is a Distinguished Fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College. Writing at the intersection of science and art, Jonathan is the author or editor of eight books, including The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Houghton 2012), The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch (Penguin 2015), and The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down (Basic Books, November 2021).

https://www.jonathangottschall.com/

Maarten Boudry is a philosopher of science and current holder of the Etienne Vermeersch Chair of Critical Thinking at Ghent University. His most recent book is Science Unlimited? On the Challenges of Scientism, co-edited with Massimo Pigliucci. His academic research deals with cultural evolution, irrational belief systems, atheism, and naturalism, evolutionary epistemology, reasoning fallacies, and conspiracy theories.

 www.maartenboudry.be

Steije Hofhuis is a cultural historian at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, who became intrigued by the idea of “mind parasites”. In his own research he examines European witch persecutions as an example of a virus-like cultural phenomenon that spread at the expense of its human hosts.

https://www.uu.nl/staff/STHofhuis

Karin is a nationally-recognized expert in political discourse. She is a social scientist who teaches the art of fruitful political conversation. She created the New York Times' Angry Uncle Bot and founded and runs Smart Politics. Since the 2016 election, Dr. Tamerius has focused on using therapeutic communication skills in political discussion, teaching activists how to depolarize conflicts and effectively share their message. She studied political psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Michigan and trained in psychiatry as a resident at UC San Francisco. Her work has been featured in a wide range of media outlets, including NPR, Fox and Friends, Business Insider, and Mother Jones.

https://www.joinsmart.org/media/

Jon Roozenbeek is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research focuses on misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, online extremism and inoculation theory. As part of his research, he co-developed the award-winning fake news games Bad News, Harmony Square and Go Viral. 

https://www.sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-jon-roozenbeek

Anthony Magnabosco is Executive Director and co-founder of Street Epistemology International, an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting the practice of street epistemology, a conversational technique that helps people reflect on their belief formation process in a productive way. Anthony has been promoting this practice for nearly a decade, and uploads examples of street epistemology to his YouTube channel.

https://streetepistemology.com/

David R. Samson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. His research focuses on the link between sleep, health, and cognition in human and non-human primates.

 
https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/david-samson/

Computational Social Scientist Kathleen M. Carley, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, and director of the university-wide center for Informed Democracy and Social-cybersecurity (IDeaS). She teaches courses in network science and simulation. Her award winning software, ORA, is used for assessing social media and tracking influence campaigns. 

https://www.isri.cmu.edu/people/core-faculty/carley-kathleen.html

Steve Gilbert received an M.S. in Experimental Psychology from Northeastern University and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is Board Certified in Counseling Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology. In the past, Steve has served as President of the Minnesota Psychological Association and chair of the MPA Ethics Committee. As an administrator and clinician in university counseling centers, he focused on emerging adulthood—a developmental period in which personal values and beliefs are explored and tested. 

Michael Shermer, Ph.D., is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. He is the author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain. 

https://michaelshermer.com/

Melanie Trecek-King is a true pioneer. Years ago, she recognized the need for science instruction focused less on facts and more on how to think like a scientist. She created a novel course that uses pseudoscience, bad science, and science denial to engage students, teach science literacy, and develop critical thinking acumen. That course—Science for Life—is now being taught at other institutions and is part of an effort to revolutionize science education. Trecek-King created Thinking Is Power to empower innovative educators and enable the general public. 

https://thinkingispower.com/about/

David Sloan Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University and president of Prosocial World, whose mission is “to consciously evolve a world that works for all”. His work represents a paradigm shift in evolutionary thinking and highlights the necessity of conscious evolution. David develops tools for positive change efforts in the real world. His recent books include This View of Life, Prosocial, and Atlas Hugged.  

https://www.darwinianrevolution.com/