5-6 December 2025 | Hybrid Seminar

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION (ONLINE & IN SITU)

LIVE ONLINE CONFERENCE – REGISTER FOR ACCESS

The LDCAPEI Lab at UNATC is organizing the NEPA – Neuroscience of Performative Arts International Seminar on 5-6 December 2025, in a hybrid format.

The seminar has the objective to facilitate collaborations between performing arts practitioners, neuroscience researchers, psychologists and art therapists from performing arts fields to develop research aimed at increasing the understanding of the processes underlying performative representations.

In recent decades, there has been growing interest in using neuroscientific methods to explore art creation, practice, and participation at a biological level. In response to this, NEPA sets out to encourage knowledge exchange and to foster interdisciplinary collaborative research teams that bridge science and the performing arts.

Understanding core processes at the basis of performative representations at biophysiological levels will contribute to the development of performative practices and the efficacity of theatre, dance and music approaches for health, therapy and the development of more efficient teaching practices, as well as the understanding of their contribution to the development of the human society.

Building on the MET Project – Developing a Methodology of Therapy Through Theatre with Effects at the Neurochemical and Neurocognitive Levels, led by Ioana Carcea, UNATC has dedicated significant research to exploring fundamental aspects of theatre practice such as imitation, synchrony, autobiographical memory, role-play, and more recently, presence. Using the perspective of social neuroscience towards art practice brought fascinating data and results for theatre practices and its use in applied settings.

PROGRAM

All time slots are listed as Bucharest time — EET. // Automatic time converter

FRIDAY, 5 DEC 2025

10.00 — Opening of the NEPA – Neuroscience of Performative Arts International Seminar

NEPA SESSION 1 — Moderator: Alexandru I. Berceanu, PhD

10.30 — Andrei C. Miu, PhD, Professor at the Department of Psychology, “Babeș-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca (RO); — TALK: Emotion regulation and mental health: Implications for performative arts

11.00 — Roxana Octavia Carare, MD, PhD, Professor of Clinical Neuroanatomy at the University of Southampton (UK); — TALK: Facilitation of drainage of toxins from the brain as a therapeutic strategy for Alzheimer’s disease

12.00 — Vladimir Mirodan, PhD, Professor Emeritus at University of the Arts London (UK); — TALK: Repetition and the Actor’s Transformation: Towards a Cognitive Understanding of the Long-Run “Qualitative Jump”

12.30 — Andrea Markovits, Director of the International School Puppet Therapy BCN (SP); — TALK: Thinking and Feeling Through Animated Forms

13.00 — Maiya Murphy, PhD, Associate Professor at National University of Singapore (SG); — TALK: Role-playing and beyond

13.30 — Miralena Tomescu, PhD Neuroscience, Senior Lecturer at Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava; researcher at UNATC Bucharest (RO); — TALK: Tracking the Emotional Brain in Time: EEG Microstates Signatures of Real, Imagined, and Virtual Experiences

14.00 — Lunch break

NEPA SESSION 2 — Moderator: Alexandra Sofonea, PhD

15.00 — Matthias Sperling, PhD, choreographer, performer, researcher, Co-investigator/Artistic Director of the EU-funded project NEUROLIVE (UK) & — Guido Orgs, PhD, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Movement & Performance Group Leader at University College London, Principal Investigator/Scientific Director of NEUROLIVE (UK); — TALK: NEUROLIVE: an interdisciplinary investigation of what makes live experiences special

15.30-17.00 — ROUND TABLE: Challenges and Opportunities of Interdisciplinary Research in Performing Arts – Psychology – Neuroscience; — Richard J. Kemp, MA (Oxon.), MFA, PhD, Professor of Theatre emeritus and Distinguished Faculty in the Arts at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (USA); — Dwaynica Greaves, Neuroscientist, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UK); — Dragos Cirneci, PhD, Professor at Spiru Haret University Bucharest (RO); — Ioana R. Podina, PhD, Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Cognitive Sciences; Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest (RO); — Shoshi Keisari, PhD, Associate Professor at the School of Creative Arts Therapies, University of Haifa (IS); — Alexandru I. Berceanu, PhD, Associate Professor and Researcher at the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” Bucharest (RO)

17.00 — Daniela Schiller, PhD Professor, Psychiatry, Neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York (USA); — TALK: Emotional memories and social spaces in the human brain

18.00 — Manuel Flurin Hendry, PhD, Professor at Zurich University of the Arts (CH) & — Yoshua E. Lima-Carmona, Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Houston and a Graduate Research Assistant at the NSF IUCRC BRAIN Center (USA); — TALK: Shared Neural Dynamics of Actor–Actress Dyads During an Acted Scene

18.30 — Shoshi Keisari, PhD, Associate Professor at the School of Creative Arts Therapies, University of Haifa (IS); — TALK: “Yes… and”: The psychological, cognitive, and physiological effects of improvisational theatre across ages

19.00 — Ioana Carcea, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (USA); — Justin S Riceberg, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (USA); — TALK: STAD – Social Transmission of Cognitive and Emotional States in the Care of Alzheimer’s Disease Patients

SATURDAY, 6 DEC 2025

NEPA SESSION 3 — Moderator: Alexandru I. Berceanu, PhD

11.00 — Richard J. Kemp, MA (Oxon.), MFA, PhD, Professor of Theatre emeritus and Distinguished Faculty in the Arts at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (USA); — TALK: Theatre and Embodied Cognition

12.00 — Gianluca Esposito, PhD, Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology and Director of the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento (IT)

12.30 — Dwaynica Greaves, Neuroscientist, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UK); — TALK: Theatre-Neuroscience: investigating an actor’s sense of self whilst in character

13.00 — Simina Pițur, PhD, Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant at “Babeș-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca (RO); — TALK: Poetry-Elicited Emotions: Psychological Mechanisms and Individual Differences

13.30 — Cristiana-Manuela Cojocaru, PhD, Lecturer at the George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology of Târgu Mureș (RO); — TALK: Process-based cognitive-behavioral approaches for modulating emotional response in chronic pain

14.00 — Lunch break

NEPA SESSION 4 — Moderator: Elena Belciu, PhD

16.00 — ROLE PLAYING BRAIN — Nisha Sajnani, Dr., Professor and Director of the NYU Steinhardt Graduate Program in Drama Therapy, Chair of the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium, and Founder of Arts & Health @ NYU (USA); — Alexandru I. Berceanu, PhD, Associate Professor and Researcher at the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” Bucharest (RO); — Steven Brown, PhD, Director of the NeuroArts Lab and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (CA); — Sanjna Banerjee, PhD, neuroscience researcher at Jameel Arts & Health Lab (USA); — Elisabeth Bahr, PhD, Research Associate at Jameel Arts & Health Lab (USA); — Mihaela Onu, Phd, Medical Physicist, Associate Lecturer at University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila” Bucharest (RO)

17.30 — Daisy Fancourt, PhD, Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology at University College London and Head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group (UK); — TALK: Why the Arts are the Forgotten Fifth Pillar of Health

SPEAKER HIGHLIGHTS

KEYNOTE

Richard J. Kemp

MA (Oxon.), MFA, PhD, Professor of Theatre emeritus and Distinguished Faculty in the Arts at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (USA)

Richard is an actor, director, author and professor and the founding Series Editor of the Routledge Theatre, Performance and Embodied Cognition Series. He trained in Jacques Lecoq’s approach to theatre with Philippe Gaulier and Monika Pagneux in Paris, later completing the “Transversale” Stage Pedagogique at L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq. A Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar on Neuroscience and Art, he has received the Institut Français award for theatre, the British Telecom Innovations Award and the Heinz Endowments Creative Heights Award (USA). Theatre credits in the UK include The Almeida, 1982 Co., Complicité, The Oxford Playhouse, Riverside Studios, Tricycle Theatre, Traverse Theatre, and co-founding and leading London’s Commotion Theatre Company. In the USA, he has worked with Unseam’d Shakespeare, Pittsburgh Playhouse, Quantum Theatre, New York’s Perry Street Theatre, Squonk Opera, and further afield at Toronto’s Harbourfront Theatre, Warsaw’s Teatr Polski, Madrid’s Festival de Otono and Peter Brook’s Bouffes du Nord theatre in Paris. Publications include Embodied Acting: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Performance (Routledge 2012), The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq (Routledge, 2016) and The Routledge Companion to Theatre, Performance and Cognitive Science (Routledge 2019).

TALK: Theatre and Embodied Cognition

KEYNOTE

Daniela Schiller

PhD Professor, Psychiatry, Neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York (USA)

Dr. Daniela Schiller is Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where she leads pioneering work on how the human brain learns, updates and regulates emotional memories, especially those tied to fear, stress and trauma. Her research combines brain-imaging and cognitive-neuroscience methods to explore how memory, emotion and resilience intersect in mental-health contexts. At Mount Sinai, she holds appointments in both Genetics & Genomic Sciences and Neuroscience. Dr. Schiller has developed a highly productive research lab focused on Affective Neuroscience with particular interest in emotional learning and memory and social cognition. Her lab made discoveries on the neural computations that take place when forming fear memories and their aberrance in PTSD. She has also developed a novel approach to examine dynamic social relationships by delineating navigational computations of social space in the human brain.

TALK: Emotional memories and social spaces in the human brain

The stability of affective states, and the flexible transition between them, are a hallmark of wellbeing. How does the brain represent, track, and shift between affective states? The talk will describe a series of studies investigating the lifecycle of emotional memories, and the use of not only direct experience but also imagination to modify emotional memories. While a great deal of our affective experience if formed through associative learning, this is only one form of memory organization. A more comprehensive and efficient organizational principal is the cognitive map. The talk will examine this concept in the case of abstract social space. Social encounters provide opportunities to become intimate or estranged from others and to gain or lose power over them. The locations of others on the axes of power and affiliation can serve as reference points for our own position in the social space. Research is beginning to uncover the spatial-like neural representation of these social coordinates. We will discuss recent and growing evidence for utilizing the principals of the cognitive map across multiple domains, providing a systematic way of organizing memories to navigate life.

Roxana Octavia Carare

MD, PhD, Professor of Clinical Neuroanatomy at the University of Southampton (UK); Visiting Professor at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy G.E. Palade, Târgu Mureș (RO)

Roxana Carare qualified in Medicine in Bucharest in 1994. During her basic clinical training, she became fascinated by anatomy and completed her PhD in neuropathology in 2006, in the University of Southampton, UK. The main international recognition for Roxana Carare has come from the interdisciplinary research she leads, relevant to the causes and new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, with over 165 peer reviewed publications in the field.She led the discovery of the intramural periarterial drainage system for proteins and fluid from the brain that fails in ageing leading to Alzheimer’s disease and her group now focusses on harnessing this system for efficient therapies and early biomarkers for age related neurodegenerative diseases. Roxana is a member of the UK Medical Research Council Dementia Platform UK Vascular Experimental Medicine committee and the UK government advisory committee for the effects of pollution on the brain, has served as the only European member of the American NIH strategy committee for funding in dementia. Roxana has won prestigious awards, including a Dementia Research Leader award from Alzheimer’s Society UK. Roxana has served as Co-Chair for The International Alliance of Women Alzheimer’s Researchers in Alzheimer’s Association, she is Chair of the Vascular Professional Interest Area of Alzheimer’s Association, co-led the Scientific Committee for Vas-Cog, Secretary of the British Neuropathological Society, member of the scientific committee of the Rainwater Foundation, serves as an expert for several international research funding boards. Roxana is a Visiting Professor in the University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology Targu Mures- Romania where she has co-founded the British-Romanian Academic Institute of Neuroscience and most recently was successful in setting up the Romanian National Centre of Excellence of Neuroscience NeuRoX.

TALK: Facilitation of drainage of toxins from the brain as a therapeutic strategy for Alzheimer’s disease

Maiya Murphy

PhD, Associate Professor at National University of Singapore (SG)

Maiya Murphy is a practitioner-researcher working at the confluence of performer training, movement, devising, and cognitive approaches to understanding theatre. She is the author of Practice, Research, and Cognition in Devised Performance (2025) and Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life (2019). She is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore and Director of the International Network for Cognition, Theatre, and Performance.

TALK: Role-playing and beyond

This presentation shares work from the recently published Practice, Research and Cognition in Devised Performance (Bloomsbury Methuen 2025). In conversation with recent neuroscientific research on acting, I suggest that a theatre studies style of thinking, emanating from the humanities, can help fill out an exploration of what acting “is” and where it is “located.” By suggesting that these discourses are related to, but often go beyond the practical discourses of acting technique, I propose that thinking beyond role-playing might help us develop methodologies that can actually help us understand it better. Making use of Michael Kirby’s continuum of “acting” to “non-acting,” I present how theatre studies thinking, not just actor training theory, might help us on the road to multi- and interdisciplinary investigations of acting practices.

Daisy Fancourt

Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology at University College London and Head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group (UK)

Daisy Fancourt is Professor of Psychobiology & Epidemiology at University College London and Head of the Social Biobehavioural Research Group. Her research focuses on the effects of social connections and behaviours on health, including loneliness, social isolation, social & community assets, arts and cultural engagement, and social prescribing. Daisy has received over £35m in research funding and her work has been recognised with over two dozen national and international research awards including a Philip Leverhulme Prize and British Academy Rising Star award. She is Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre on Arts and Health, a Technical Advisor to the WHO, an Expert Scientific Adviser to UK Government, a BBC New Generation Thinker, and a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. Daisy has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers and given over 50 keynotes around the world. Her latest book Art Cure is published by Penguin & Macmillan. She is listed by Clarivate as one of the most highly cited scientists in the world.

TALK: Why the Arts are the Forgotten Fifth Pillar of Health

Matthias Sperling

PhD, choreographer, performer, researcher, Co-investigator/Artistic Director of the EU-funded project NEUROLIVE (UK)

Matthias Sperling is a Canadian-German choreographer, performer, and researcher based in London, whose work spans theatre, gallery, and museum contexts, curatorial practice, and collaborations with scientific research. His artistic investigations explore the generative potentials of dance and choreography, focusing on body-mind continuity and embodied knowledge-production, often integrating ideas from neuroscience and cognitive science through critically playful, choreographic “science-fiction.” His works have been presented at major UK institutions, amongst which Sadler’s Wells, Tate Modern, Southbank Centre, Royal Opera House, or Wellcome Collection, as well as internationally in over 15 countries. Artistic Director of the EU-funded project NEUROLIVE, he has also been a longstanding collaborator with Siobhan Davies Dance, and previously performed with companies such as Wayne McGregor’s Random Dance and Matthew Bourne’s Adventures in Motion Pictures. Born in Toronto and trained in contemporary dance and philosophy, he later completed his dance studies at Trinity Laban and earned a PhD in choreographic practice at De Montfort University.

TALK: NEUROLIVE: an interdisciplinary investigation of what makes live experiences special

Guido Orgs

PhD, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Movement & Performance Group Leader at University College London, Principal Investigator/Scientific Director of NEUROLIVE (UK)

Guido Orgs is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL and Movement & Performance Group Leader, whose research examines human movement in real-world contexts through the lenses of dance, performance, creative movement, sport, and mobile neuroimaging. Trained in Psychology and Performing Dance at the University of Düsseldorf and the Folkwang University of the Arts, he worked as a full-time performer with NEUER TANZ/VA WÖLFL before moving to London in 2009 for a postdoctoral fellowship at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. He later joined Goldsmiths, University of London, where he founded the MSc in Psychology of the Arts, Neuroaesthetics & Creativity. Since 2020, he has served as Principal Investigator of NEUROLIVE, an EU-funded interdisciplinary project investigating the nature of live experience, and in 2024 he returned to UCL’s ICN to continue advancing research on movement, cognition, and performance.

TALK: NEUROLIVE: an interdisciplinary investigation of what makes live experiences special

Ioana Carcea

M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Pharmacology, Physiology and Neuroscience (USA)

Ioana Carcea is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology & Neuroscience at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Originally from Romania, she completed her Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Her postdoctoral work at NYU School of Medicine under Robert C. Froemke was focused on research on how neuromodulatory systems (notably oxytocin and vasopressin) shape neural circuits underlying auditory perception, social behavior, and maternal care. At Rutgers, she leads the Carcea Lab, investigating the neural-circuit mechanisms for social behavior and sensory processing across development and adulthood, with a focus on how internal states and neuroendocrine signals modulate perception and social bonding.

Justin S. Riceberg

PhD, Instructor in Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (USA)

Justin S. Riceberg, PhD, is an Instructor in Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he investigates how distributed neural circuits encode memory, learning, and cognitive flexibility. His research focuses on hippocampal, prefrontal, and orbitofrontal ensemble activity, using large-scale neural recording and state-space analytical methods to map how episodes, rules, and decision strategies are represented across brain regions. He has contributed to studies demonstrating how hippocampal signals shape orbitofrontal representations during learning and how CA1 and medial prefrontal ensembles encode episodes and behavioral rules within shared task structures. With a portfolio of peer-reviewed publications and a growing citation record, Riceberg is recognized for bridging advanced neural-data analysis with clear scientific communication, contributing to both fundamental neuroscience and translational perspectives on cognition.

Vladimir Mirodan

PhD, Professor Emeritus at University of the Arts London (UK)

Vladimir Mirodan is a theatre director and scholar, currently Emeritus Professor at University of the Arts London (Central Saint Martins). He holds a PhD from Royal Holloway University of London, where he studied Theatre. Mirodan specializes in the intersection of acting practice and psychological theory — focusing on psychological assessment, motor learning, cognitive neuroscience, movement analysis, and psychotherapeutic processes. He has published extensively on transformative acting, character development, and the psycho-physical dimension of performance, most notably in his book The Actor and the Character: Explorations in the Psychology of Transformative Acting (Routledge, 2019), which examines how actors may undergo real “body-mind” transformations when embodying fictional characters.

TALK: Repetition and the Actor’s Transformation: Towards a Cognitive Understanding of the Long-Run “Qualitative Jump”

Andrei Miu

PhD, Professor in the Department of Psychology at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (RO)

Andrei C. Miu is Full Professor in the Department of Psychology at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and the Founding Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at that university. His work explores the psychological and biological mechanisms of emotion, emotion regulation, emotion-cognition interactions, and the neurobiological/genetic underpinnings of individual differences in emotional functioning and vulnerability to psychopathology. He has authored more than a hundred publications, combining methodologies from behavioral genetics, neuroimaging, physiological measurements, and psychological assessment. His research has addressed topics such as how early-life adversity affects emotional regulation and mental health risk, the neurophysiological bases of decision-making under emotion, and the complex interplay between genes, brain, and behavior.

TALK: Emotion regulation and mental health: Implications for performative arts

Extensive evidence from laboratory and real-world studies shows that we experience emotions in most situations and that we actively try to regulate them much of the time. In other words, we are far from helpless in the face of our emotional lives. Recent work in affective science and cognitive neuroscience has characterized the multiple strategies people use to modulate emotion and has described their impact on cognitive performance, behavior and mental health. In this presentation, I will give a brief overview of this research and discuss why emotion regulation is particularly important for actors and other performers, who routinely engage with intense, repeated, and sometimes personally salient emotional states. I will highlight how different regulation strategies can support creativity, authenticity, and stage presence, but may also contribute to exhaustion, anxiety, or burnout, and I will outline emerging implications for training and psychological support in the performative arts.

Shoshi Keisari

PhD, Associate Professor at the School of Creative Arts Therapies, University of Haifa (IS)

Shoshi Keisari, Ph.D Associate Professor at the University of Haifa, directs the Drama Therapy and Psychodrama Graduate Program. She is also a researcher with the Center for Research and Study of Aging, the Emili Sagol Creative Arts Therapies Research Center, and the Drama and Health Science Lab at the University of Haifa. Her research investigates playfulness and its neural mechanisms, drama therapy across the lifespan, playback theatre, and arts-based approaches for aging. She is the co-author of the book An Introduction to Psychotherapeutic Playback Theater: Hall of Mirrors on Stage, published by Routledge. She has presented her work at international conferences and published in international refereed journals. Her studies are supported by the Israel Science Foundation and the National Science Foundation NSF–BSF.

TALK: “Yes… and”: The psychological, cognitive, and physiological effects of improvisational theatre across ages

Andrea Markovits

Director of the International School Puppet Therapy BCN (SP)

Andrea Markovits is a PhD student at the University of Barcelona (UB), where she researches animated forms, memory and trauma in adults through neuro-informed and embodied approaches. Since 2016, she has co-founded and directed the International Puppet Therapy Program. She holds a master’s in arts in Health and Art Therapy, a postgraduate degree in Dramatherapy and training in Puppetry and Object Theatre.
Andrea has developed Puppet Therapy in international contexts, including collaborations with Unima Ukraine, the Puppet Therapy Academy at the Chuncheon Festival in South Korea and FSF-Fachschule Figurenspieltherapieen in Olten. Her work also includes community-based projects with people with intellectual disabilities, individuals living with HIV/AIDS and groups affected by political violence, war and disappearance, as well as memory projects involving therapeutic puppetry with survivors and families affected by the Chilean military dictatorship, funded by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage of Chile.

TALK: Thinking and Feeling Through Animated Forms

Gianluca Esposito

Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology and Director of the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento (IT)

Gianluca Esposito is a Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology and Director of the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento. His research program focuses on the interplay between physiological regulation, socio-cognitive development, and mental health, particularly the early parent-infant relationship and its neurobiological underpinnings. Drawing on neuroimaging, hyperscanning, physiological and genetic methods, his research focuses on the understanding of typical and atypical developmental trajectories in children. He is the author of over 300 peer-reviewed publications, edits the Journal of Genetic Psychology, and holds a senior editorial role at Research in Developmental Disabilities.

Dwaynica Greaves

Neuroscientist, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UK)

Dwaynica Greaves is a Neuroscientist, Neuroaesthetician and Creative from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. She has spent the last six years researching at the intersection of Theatre and Social-Cognitive Neuroscience, to investigate the effects of building and performing a character on an actor’s sense of self.

TALK: Theatre-Neuroscience: investigating an actor’s sense of self whilst in character

Miralena Tomescu

PhD Neuroscience, Senior Lecturer at Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava (RO)

Miralena I. Tomescu is a neuroscientist and Senior Lecturer currently based at Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava, with additional affiliation at CINETic — the International Center for Research and Education in Creative Technologies at the National University of Theatre and Film I.L. Caragiale Bucharest. She earned her degree in psychology at University of Bucharest and subsequently completed a Master’s in Neuroscience at the University of Geneva. Her PhD, also in Neuroscience, was conducted in collaboration with the FBM laboratory at Geneva. Tomescu is specialized in brain research using electroencephalography (EEG) — particularly in analyzing spontaneous and event-related brain activity to investigate cognitive processes, neural dynamics of spontaneous thought, emotional states, and neuro-psychiatric conditions. Her work includes studies on EEG microstates and their relations to affective states, spontaneous thoughts, and social/neurocognitive functioning — contributing to better understanding of brain network dynamics, mental health, and cognitive-affective regulation.

TALK: Tracking the Emotional Brain in Time: EEG Microstates Signatures of Real, Imagined, and Virtual Experiences

Manuel Flurin Hendry

PhD, Professor at Zurich University of the Arts (CH)

Dr. Manuel Flurin Hendry is an award-winning, Cannes-selected feature film director, screenwriter, lecturer and academic researcher born and based in Zurich, Switzerland. His theatrical feature «Papa Moll», produced by Disney Switzerland, sold to more than forty countries. Hendry teaches cinematic arts at the Zurich University of the Arts, where he coordinates the Screen Acting program, and at the International Film School Cologne. As a senior researcher at ETH Zurich, he lectures on AI, algorithmic literacy and the societal impact of Large Language Models. His research projects investigate the pressures of digital systems on self-perception, visual education, labor relations and artistic practice in ongoing collaborations with Residenz Theatre Munich, HKAPA Hongkong and the international association of film and media schools CILECT. His work is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNF and has been featured in «Der Spiegel», Nature Scientific Data and TV stations around the globe.As a founding member of the art/science tank «Silicon Stories» and the Swiss Center for Responsible AI (SCRAI), Hendry promotes computational literacy and critique through workshops, art interventions and the art/science festival «After The Algorithm». His book «The Feeling Machine» will be published by De Gruyter in 2026.

TALK: Shared Neural Dynamics of Actor–Actress Dyads During an Acted Scene

Yoshua E. Lima-Carmona

Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Houston and a Graduate Research Assistant at the NSF IUCRC BRAIN Center (USA)

Yoshua E. Lima-Carmona is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at the University of Houston and a Graduate Research Assistant at the NSF IUCRC BRAIN Center, specializing in Mobile Brain–Body Imaging (MoBI) and Hyperscanning. His work investigates the neural dynamics of artistic expression, including acting, dance, and music, as well as the brain’s responses to multisensory natural environments for stress reduction. Trained in neuroengineering and cognitive science, he applies advanced neural data acquisition and signal processing methods to study naturalistic human behavior and develop brain–body interface technologies. He also serves as President of the BRAIN-AccelNet Student Network, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across neuroscience, engineering, and the arts. Yoshua has mentored students from high school to post-baccalaureate levels through NSF- and NIH-funded programs, promoting inclusive, hands-on research training. He has presented his work at the Society for Neuroscience and the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity, and further expanded his expertise through the Advanced Neural Data Analysis and Neuroinformatics School at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. His interdisciplinary research bridges art, neuroscience, and technology to better understand how embodied experiences shape brain function and well-being.

TALK: Shared Neural Dynamics of Actor–Actress Dyads During an Acted Scene

Simina Pițur

PhD, Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant at Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca (RO)

Simina Andreea Pițur is a researcher in cognitive neuroscience at Babeș-Bolyai University, where she is currently a PhD candidate in the Applied Cognitive Psychology Doctoral School and a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. Her work focuses on the neural and psychological mechanisms of emotion, emotion regulation, childhood maltreatment, and aesthetic experience, integrating methods such as EEG, neuroimaging, and experience sampling. She has contributed to several major research projects, including studies on neural markers of trauma-related psychopathology and emotion regulation in early adversity, funded through national and European programs. Pițur is also affiliated with the BRAINQ platform within the INSPIRE infrastructure project, and teaches seminars in Neuroscience, Behavioral Genetics, and Applied Cognitive Neuroscience. Her publications span topics from emotion regulation to neuroaesthetics, including studies on poetry-elicited emotions and the neurophysiology of expressive flexibility.

TALK: Poetry-Elicited Emotions: Psychological Mechanisms and Individual Differences

Cristiana-Manuela Cojocaru

PhD, Lecturer at the George Emil Palade University of Medicine, Pharmacy, Science and Technology of Târgu-Mureș (RO)

Cristiana-Manuela Cojocaru is a clinical psychologist and cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist focusing on the application of evidence-based interventions for anxiety and affective disorders in adults. Her research interests include the role of psychological interventions targeting the reduction of cognitive and behavioral processes for alleviating anxiety and depression symptoms occurring in chronic medical conditions accompanied by prolonged pain. Specifically, her work concentrates on the evaluation of acceptance and values-based psychotherapeutic techniques for improving the psychological adjustment in rheumatic diseases.

TALK: Process-based cognitive-behavioral approaches for modulating emotional response in chronic pain

Ioana R. Podina

PhD, Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Cognitive Sciences; Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest (RO)

Ioana R. Podina is the Director of the Laboratory of Clinical Cognitive Sciences and a Full Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Bucharest. Trained in clinical and cognitive psychology, with psychotherapy certification from the Albert Ellis Institute in New York, she works at the intersection of digital mental health, e-health interventions, clinical cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and meta-research in psychology. She currently serves as Chair of the Research Committee of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI), Romania’s country representative for the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR), and an expert within UNESCO’s neurotechnology ethics group. Her recent work includes leading interdisciplinary research teams and major national and European projects on AI-based therapeutic agents, augmented-reality training platforms, and neurocognitive effects of theatre-based interventions.

Dragoș Cîrneci

PhD, Associate Professor at Spiru Haret University, Bucharest (RO)

Dragoș Cîrneci is Associate Professor at Spiru Haret University, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (Bucharest), where he also serves as director of the Centre for Mental Health and Human Development. He holds a PhD in Psychology with specialization in cognitive and behavioral neurosciences and is the author of the first Romanian handbook of developmental cognitive neuroscience, followed by multiple published works and articles on neuronal network dynamics, memory, stress, psycho-neuro-immunology, and the neural basis of belief and behavior.

THE ROLE PLAYING BRAIN

Nisha Sajnani

Dr., Professor and Director of the NYU Steinhardt Graduate Program in Drama Therapy, Chair of the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium, and Founder of Arts & Health @ NYU (USA)

Nisha Sajnani (she/her) is Professor and Director of the NYU Steinhardt Graduate Program in Drama Therapy, Chair of the NYU Creative Arts Therapies Consortium, and Founder of Arts & Health @ NYU. She also holds faculty roles at NYU Abu Dhabi, where she created the interdisciplinary course Can Art Save Lives?, linking arts’ health benefits with practice and policy; the NYU Stern School of Business, teaching improvisation and leadership; and the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, lecturing on arts’ role in supporting displaced individuals’ wellbeing. She is the co-founding co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, established with the WHO to measurably improve lives through the arts.

Alexandru I. Berceanu

PhD, Associate Professor and Researcher at the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” Bucharest (RO)

Alexandru I. Berceanu, PhD in Theatre and MA in Neurobiology, is conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersection of theatre and neuroscience. His research is centered around aggressive and prosocial behaviors developing knowledge on how using drama and play can build emotion regulation and psychological well-being through theatrical representation. He was facilitator and developer of applied theatre projects in different contexts such as intergenerational trauma, drug-addiction or bullying. His results are published in international journals such as eNeuro, Frontiers in Psychology and NeuroImage, Psychophysiology. Alexandru is a director and an associate professor at the Animation and Interaction Department of UNATC IL Caragiale, Bucharest, Romania where he also teaches at the MA Community and Therapy Theatre for. He initiated the Research Centre CINETic at UNATC and the MA programs for Interactive Technologies and Game Design at the same university. His artistic work includes animation film, virtual reality, installations, graphic novel, performative installations along theatre and was presented nationally and internationally. He is currently the Vice-Rector for Research, Development and Innovation at UNATC Bucharest.

Steven Brown

PhD, Director of the NeuroArts Lab and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (CA)

Steven Brown is the director of the NeuroArts Lab and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He got his Ph.D. in the Department of Genetics and Development at Columbia University in New York, and did postdoctoral research at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. His research deals with the neural basis of the arts, including music, dance, acting, storytelling, cinema, drawing, aesthetics, and creativity. He is author of “The Unification of the Arts” (Oxford University Press) and co-editor of “The Origins of Music” (MIT Press) and “Music and Manipulation” (Berghahn Books).

Sanjna Banerjee

PhD, neuroscience researcher at Jameel Arts & Health Lab (USA)

Sanjna Banerjee is a neuroscience researcher and theater worker. She completed her doctoral studies from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, where she studied perceptual attention and decision making in humans using transcranial magnetic stimulation. She has been engaged with theatre in Bangalore as writer, director, and performer for over 8 years. Sanjna is passionate about helping create new, interdisciplinary scaffolds of well being through bringing together the practice of art with scientific inquiry into the brain, mind, & social connections, and currently conducts research with the Foundation for Arts and Health India (FAHI).

Elisabeth Bahr

PhD, Research Associate at Jameel Arts & Health Lab (USA)

Elisabeth Bahr is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Jameel Arts & Health Lab bridging healthcare, research, and the arts. Her research explores intersections between creativity, the arts and well-being. Her background as an occupational therapist specializing in neurological conditions informs her approach to supporting neurodiverse populations. As a transdisciplinary artist, she integrates her clinical expertise with creative practices, developing arts-based health initiatives that offer support to patients and communities alike. She is concurrently pursuing a Master of Creative Writing and Literature degree at Harvard Extension School.

Mihaela Onu

Phd, Medical Physicist, Associate Lecturer at University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila” Bucharest (RO)

Phd, Medical Physicist, Clinical Hospital “Prof. Dr. Th. Burghele”, Associate Lecturer at University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Carol Davila”, Master courses on Medical Biophysics, teaching on medical imaging techniques. Associate Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, “Politehnica” University of Bucharest.

NEPA

Nepa anophthalma is a small, blind water scorpion endemic to Movile Cave, Romania, living in an environment devoid of light and oxygen. The discovery of this remarkable creature was inspired by the work of Emil Racoviță, the pioneering Romanian biologist who studied how life evolves in isolated cave ecosystems. Similarly, the NEPA initiative views the performing arts as a living laboratory for studying the complexity of human communication, emotion, and representation of life, bringing neuroscientific and physiological research methods from the lab into the performative space.