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The magazine will feature exclusive interviews with artists, scientists, writers and creative thinkers.

Imagination in Education

“At this time, the world we live in is in great need of a balance between our heads and our hearts, so that we may connect to the ‘tap-root’ in us all by opening us to the realm of imagination, inspiration and integration.”

Sacha, Duchess of Abercorn OBE was an innovator in creative education and the founder of The Pushkin Trust, an organisation that supports creative learning and education across Ireland, works to provide and support a holistic model to spark imagination and deepen awareness of our collective creativity, our humanity and ‘the child’ within each one of us.

Sadly, Sacha died on 10 December 2018 and this interview, first published in the launch issue of Interalia Magazine, is re-published here as a tribute to her creativity, compassion and imagination.

Creativity, Imagination and Philosophy

Dustin Stokes is a philosopher at the University of Utah, having previously researched and taught at the Universities of Sussex and Toronto, in both philosophy and cognitive science. His research includes work on perception, imagination, and creative thought and behaviour. In this exclusive interview he discusses his ideas on creativity, imagination and philosophy.

Creativity, Imagination and ‘Finding Your Element’

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources in education and business. His inspiring TED talks have been viewed more than 25 million times and seen by an estimated 250 million people in over 150 countries. In an exclusive interview for the Interalia Magazine he discusses subjects such as the transformative role of creativity and imagination in education and how we can all ‘Find Our Element’.

Lost Knowledge of the Imagination

Gary Lachman is the author of twenty-two books on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to literary suicides, popular culture and the history of the occult. A founding member of the rock band Blondie, in 2006 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He retired from music to take up BA in philosophy. He now writes for several journals in the UK, US, and Europe, lectures widely and his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Drawing on the work of Owen Barfield, Goethe, Henry Corbin, Kathleen Raine, and others, and ranging from the teachings of ancient mystics to the latest developments in neuroscience, his book ‘Lost Knowledge of the Imagination’ draws us back to a philosophy and tradition that restores imagination to its rightful place, essential to our knowing reality to the full, and to our very humanity itself.

The Purkinje Pattern

Dana Simmons is a neuroscientist, science-artist, and medical writer in Chicago. While at the university, Dana transformed Purkinje neurons into art by testing the limits of confocal microscopy and adding an artistic touch. She is endlessly fascinated by the beauty in the brain and the patterns that are ever-present throughout microscopic and macroscopic nature. In 2016 she received the Passion in Science: Arts & Creativity award from the New England Biolabs.

On Philosophy and the Imagination

Nicholas Wiltsher is a philosopher, working on imagination, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, phenomenology, and feminist philosophy. He is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow in the Centre for Philosophical Psychology at the University of Antwerp. In this exclusive interview he discusses his ideas on the relationship between philosophy and the imagination.

Breaking new ground in African philosophy

Jonathan O. Chimakonam Ph.D, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He is also a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His teaching and research interests cover the areas of African Philosophy, Logic, Philosophy of Mind, Environmental Ethics and Postmodern/Postcolonial Thought. In this exclusive interview he discusses his aim to break new grounds in African philosophy by formulating a system that unveils new concepts and opens new vistas for thought (Conversational philosophy); a method that represents a new approach to philosophising in African and intercultural philosophies (Conversational thinking); and a system of logic that grounds them both (Ezumezu).

On ‘Identity’

Florian Coulmas is Professor of Japanese Society and Sociolinguistics at the IN-EAST Institute of East Asian Studies at Duisburg-Essen University. He has published numerous books, including ‘An Introduction to Multilingualism’ (OUP, 2017) and ‘Writing and Society: A Introduction’ (Cambridge University Press, 2013). In 2016, he was awarded the Meyer-Struckmann-Prize for Research in Arts and Social Sciences. For the past three decades he has served as Associate Editor of the ‘International Journal of the Sociology of Languages’, during which time he has observed the steadily increasing use of the concept of identity in both general and scholarly publications. His latest publication, ‘Identity: A Very Short Introduction’, was published in February 2019.

Fragility and impermanence

“I am interested in fragility and capturing the essence of beauty in the inconsequential, the fragile, the imperfect. For me this encapsulates something very human; our vulnerabilities and unescapable impermanence.”

Sophie Erin Cooper creates work exploring the intricacies in the natural world and intangible human experiences; such as memories, thought patterns and the passing of time. Her piece ‘A Split Second of Humanity (Phase Two)’ was selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2018 and is currently being exhibited on a national UK tour.