Anil Seth and Suki Chan in Conversation

Who are we? How does the Brain make us, us? Suki Chan joins award winning author and Neuroscientist Anil Seth to discuss his new book Being You – A New Science of Consciousness and to talk about what the worlds of neuroscience, philosophy, psychology and physics can teach us about ourselves, dementia and each other.

Part of the public programme for Suki Chan's CONSCIOUS.

About Anil Seth

With more than two decades of research and outreach experience, Anil’s mission is to advance the science of consciousness and to use its insights for the benefit of society, technology and medicine. As well as being an internationally leading researcher, he is also a renowned public speaker, best-selling author, and sought-after collaborator on many high-profile art-science projects.

Anil is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator, and Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press). He has published more than 200 research papers in a variety of fields and is recognized as being in the top 1% of researchers worldwide by area (2019-2021, Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher). He holds degrees in Natural Sciences (MA, Cambridge), Knowledge-Based Systems (MSc, Sussex), and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (Ph.D., Sussex). He carried out his postdoctoral work in San Diego with the Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman.

About Suki Chan

Suki Chan is a London based artist and film director. Her films take audiences on an immersive journey, and shine a light on subjects that are under-represented across the human condition: from dementia, sight-loss, identity to belonging. Chan's passion is to change perception and build empathy for other people’s realities.

Chan uses a range of media including installation, moving image, photography and sound to explore our subjective perception of reality. Her mesmerising film works draws the viewer into a cinematic 'elsewhere' to investigate memory, belief and knowledge systems.

Chan's research-based practice sits at the intersection of art and science. Her work features dialogues with diverse communities from people living with dementia, blind and partially sighted people, commuters, meditators, to psychologists and neuroscientists. Chan seeks out narratives that explore alternative ways of looking at the world and stories that challenge and destabilise our understanding of perception and reality.

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