🌿 MSR Research Webinar Series

Researching Psychedelic Experience: Promise, Pitfalls, and Possibilities for Management and Spirituality Scholarship

🗓 Friday, April 24, 2026

⏰ 11:00am - 12:30pm ET

Organized by the MSR Research Committee and co-hosted by Dr. Stacey Guenther (George Mason University, USA) and Dr. Mohammed Raei (Antioch University, Jordan)

🔗 Register here:

 Researching Psychedelic Experience

We warmly invite you to join this 90-minute interactive webinar exploring the challenges and opportunities of researching psychedelic experience in contemporary retreat settings. As interest continues to grow at the intersection of leadership development, meaning-making, and altered states of consciousness, there is an increasing need for rigorous, reflective, and courageous scholarship.

The webinar will open with Drs. Bennet Zelner and Rachelle Sampson (University of Maryland, USA), who will share insights from their Connected Leadership Study, a multi-year empirical research program examining how psychedelic experiences are reflected in business leaders' decision-making in organizational contexts. Rather than focusing on findings, they will reflect on the practical, methodological, and ethical lessons learned through sustained field engagement with senior executives in consciousness-expanding contexts. They will discuss both the promise of this research-for advancing theory on transformation, identity, and leadership-and the methodological and institutional pitfalls that scholars should anticipate.

Next, Dr. Dmitrij Achelrod, who leads psychedelic-centered retreats with the Evolute Institute based in the Netherlands, will offer a practitioner's perspective exploring the scientific underpinning of how psychedelics work in the brain, and most importantly, how this unique "consciousness technology" could help us on our path of personal maturation and professional growth. He will also discuss working with researchers and what he seeks in research partners.

In the final portion of the webinar, participants will break into small groups to explore how they themselves might approach researching psychedelic experience. Guiding questions will include: 

• What phenomena feel most compelling to study (e.g., transformation, community, decision-making, spiritual development)?
• What methods might be most appropriate (e.g., ethnography, interviews, longitudinal designs, physiological measures, mixed methods)?

• How might scholars thoughtfully navigate institutional review processes and cultural sensitivities?

We will close with a brief plenary synthesis of emerging insights and research ideas. ✨

This webinar is designed to spark thoughtful dialogue, practical insight, and new collaborations at the frontier of management and spirituality research.

See you on April 24 (or April 25, depending on where you are in the world)!

With warm regards,

MSR Research Committee
(Tianyuan Yu, Naida Culshaw, Stacey Guenther, Konstantin Weicht, and Gaëtan Mourmant)

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Tianyuan Yu, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Mount Saint Vincent University
Halifax NS Canada

Representative-at-Large (Research)
Management, Spirituality & Religion Division, Academy of Management
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