CSWR Welcomes Its Fall 2025 Scholars and Artists

Simon Cox is a scholar of religion currently serving as a Research Fellow at the Esalen Center for Theory and Research, where he explores intersections between somatic practice, religious traditions, and scientific thought. After earning a Classics degree from the University of Houston in 2008, he studied at Yuxu Temple on Wudang Mountain in China, graduating from the Wudang Daoist Traditional Kung Fu Academy in 2014. He received his PhD from Rice University in 2019, with research focused on Chinese and Tibetan mysticism. His dissertation was published as The Subtle Body: A Genealogy by Oxford University Press in 2022 as part of the "Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism" series. He founded Okanagan Valley Wudang, a martial arts and Qigong academy in British Columbia. His forthcoming second book explores the genealogy of the concept of energy,  its reception in China during the modern period, and Western reception of the concept of Qi.

Marco Pasi is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Centre for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents at the University of Amsterdam. He specializes in the history of modern Western esotericism, particularly in relation to magic, art, and politics. His publications include Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics. He has been a Frances Yates Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies and at the Max Weber Kolleg in Erfurt, and has held invited professorships at various institutions. He participated in the research network Enchanted Modernities, which examined the influence of Theosophy and related movements on visual, musical, performing, and applied arts. He previously served as the General Secretary of the European Association for the Study of Religions and currently serves as chief editor of the Aries Book Series: Texts and Studies in Western Esotericism.

Peter Skafish is the cofounder and Director of Research at the Sol Foundation, a research and policy institute focused on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) and their implications for science, government, and civil society. A cultural anthropologist whose research addresses problems of ontology, modernity, religion, and translation, as well as the philosophical implications of anthropology, he has authored Rough Metaphysics: The Speculative Thought and Mediumship of Jane Roberts and translated several books, including Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's Cannibal Metaphysics. He has held teaching and research positions at UC Berkeley, McGill University, the Collège de France, and the Bauhaus University, Weimar. He previously founded and led the Institute of Speculative and Critical Inquiry and served as the editor in chief of the journal Qui Parle. He is currently a fellow at The Institute and is working on a book addressing the ontology and politics of UAP.