Researcher · Practitioner · Experience Designer
Inner worlds · immersive futures · the pursuit of wisdom
I work at the meeting point of psychology, neuroscience, contemplative science, psychedelic research and immersive technology.
My central interest is not simply how people have extraordinary experiences, but what helps those experiences become enduring changes in how we perceive, relate and live.
Begin a conversation →Hello, I’m Melissa
I am a multidisciplinary researcher, educator, meditation teacher and experience designer working across psychology, contemplative practice, psychedelic science and immersive technology.
My work moves between university research, psychedelic therapy training, contemplative education, experience design and the creation of new cultural spaces for exploring inner life.
Rather than treating science, spirituality, creativity and technology as separate territories, I am interested in the places where they meet, challenge one another and reveal something new.
I currently work as a Research Fellow with The University of Melbourne, Swinburne University, and the Intangible Realities Laboratory. I am a Director of Cyberdelic Nexus and PATHS XR, Secretary of PRISM, and a co-founder of the Anam Cara Centre.
I am also undertaking a masters in clinical psychology, bringing psychological rigour and clinical responsibility into work that often touches profound, unusual and difficult human experiences.
What helps transformation last?
“Open the doors of perception and walk the path of practice”
A powerful experience can open a door. It cannot walk us through it.
At the heart of my work is an enquiry into the conditions that allow flourishing to take root: attention, embodiment, relationship, practice, meaning, community, ecology, and the worlds we design around ourselves.
These questions connect everything I do.
Watch my story
A short introduction to the questions, experiences and collaborations that shaped my work.
No time to watch? Keep exploring below.
Manifestation of my transcendent tether
Three fields of exploration. Three expressions of the same braid.
01 · THE SCIENCE OF INNER WORLDS
the axon: signal becoming self
My research explores the relationship between profound experience and psychological development.
This includes mystical-type experiences, wisdom, flourishing, contemplative practice, psychedelic therapy and the processes through which altered states support altered traits.
My honours research examined whether wisdom changes the relationship between mystical-type experience and flourishing. The findings suggested that extraordinary experiences matter, but the qualities we develop around them may matter just as much.
02 · IMMERSIVE FUTURES
the network: attention finding its shape
Technology is often designed to seize attention. I am interested in how it might instead return attention to us.
Through Cyberdelic Nexus, PATHS XR and the Intangible Realities Laboratory, I help develop immersive experiences that bring together virtual reality, contemplative practice, art, sound, ritual, psychology and learning design.
The aim is not technological transcendence for its own sake. It is to create environments that support metacognition, connection, awareness, as well as psychedelic preparation and integration.
Current work includes immersive experiences for psychedelic-assisted therapy, contemplative education and a University of Melbourne collaboration exploring virtual reality, deep ecology, awe and nature connection.
03 · WISDOM IN PRACTICE
the vine: insight taking root
Insight is fragile when it remains an idea.
My educational and contemplative work explores how psychological skills, embodied practice, relational learning and wisdom traditions can be translated into accessible tools for the modern world.
This includes meditation teaching, clinical and therapeutic education, integration work, and the development of frameworks such as SWIM&FLOAT™, which brings together somatic awareness, metacognition, interdependence and wisdom.
The deeper aspiration is to make profound contemplative states more accessible, more communal and more woven into everyday life.
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⚘ Practice beneath the theory
A safe space to explore, make meaning and cultivate change. ↝
My perspective has been shaped by more than a decade of meditation training, including mindfulness-based approaches, MiCBT, MBSR, Bön study and, particularly, Tibetan Buddhist practice, nourished by more than 60 days in silent retreat.
These practices have taught me to approach inner life with curiosity, precision and compassion, while remaining attentive to the conditions that allow insight to be safely integrated into everyday life.
I also remain interested in the edges and challenges of contemplative systems: what they illuminate, where they need safeguards, and how they can enter into their most alive dialogue with psychology, neuroscience, culture and lived experience.
Contemplative practice is one of the places from which the work is tested, questioned and renewed. The most generative work often begins when different ways of knowing become capable of meeting with respect and reciprocity.
Relational
Integrative
Trauma-aware
My therapeutic approach supports people to understand their patterns, inner multiplicity and attachment needs, while developing a more embodied, compassionate and flexible relationship with their experience.
I work between the structured clarity of evidence-based psychology and the spacious, experiential intelligence of contemplative practice, and embodied creative ritual.
Bringing psychological rigour and clinical responsibility into work that often touches profound, unusual and difficult human experiences.
I love to give back by translating profound contemplative teachings into practical tools that can be used in real life.
My aspiration is to empower others to more skilfully navigate their path, nurture their creativity, and wholeheartedly relate.
Let’s walk the path together.
Work with me →Beyond the formal biography
I am a dancer, painter, diver, lover of nature and frequent wearer of a Starfleet communicator badge, with considerably more sincerity than roleplay.
I am drawn to flow arts, colour, science fiction, ritual, philosophical ideas and experiences that make the enchanted world visible again.
Much of my work begins in that territory: where empirical enquiry meets play, where reverence surpasses discipline, and where wonder becomes the way of closer attention.
How I arrived here
The path has moved through stories, neuroscience, psychedelics, contemplative practice, the living world and immersive technology. It has rarely travelled in a straight line.
The Reader
I had always been fascinated by the psyche. Starting with the motivations, and moments of transcendence, of characters from Shakespeare, to Dostoyevsky, Huxley, and my video game characters. Despite yearning to be an artist, I studied psychology in my first year of university.
“To reveal, or manifest, the mind.”
The word that opened a door
Having never encountered what psychedelics were, and the recommended reading of The Doors of Perception, it was love upon the etymology of the word. It was the word alone that led me, on that evening of reading, to become a psychedelic researcher.
Looking at the brain
I began with neuroscience, trying to understand the mind by looking closely at the brain.
The psychedelic field
That enquiry led me into Australia’s emerging psychedelic field. I co-founded the Australian Psychedelic Society, joined the PRISM board, a DGR-1 charity pioneering research, assisted in the scientific writing of the application to the TGA to reschedule psilocybin and MDMA, and contributed to research at Swinburne University.
Learning to observe the mind
Contemplative practice complicated that enquiry in the best possible way. It showed me that knowing theories about the mind is different from learning to observe, and befriend, the mind directly.
Over more than a decade of meditation practice, study and retreat, I became increasingly interested in the meeting place between first-person experience and third-person science.
The more-than-human world
Both psychedelics and my contemplative practice turned a city slicker into a nature enthusiast, and I am forever grateful for my deepening connection to the more-than-human world.
Profound states do not automatically lead us to wisdom. Experiences can be healing, confusing, destabilising, liberating, or some complex mixture of these. Context, preparation, relationship, interpretation and integration all matter.
Technology as lived environment
At the same time, I was becoming fascinated by immersive technology. Virtual reality could create awe, alter bodily perception, reshape a sense of space and self, and allow people to encounter ideas as lived environments rather than abstractions. Returning to my roots as a gamer…
What if, rather than vanquishing super mutants in my teenage gaming years, I had been taming my shadow through gameplay? ☺
My journey has surfaced the following questions…
Could we design technology not only to simulate worlds, but to help us perceive this world more clearly? How can we make the years of contemplative training, transformation and insight more accessible, supported, and fun?My work continues to grow from these questions. ⚘
Let’s make better inner worlds
I collaborate with researchers, clinicians, contemplatives, artists, educators and technologists who are exploring how we might live with greater clarity, connection and compassion.
Research collaborations · Speaking · Education · Experience design · Advisory work