University of Virginia · Department of Philosophy
Humanistic
Cognitive Science
Hub
Cognitive Science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind. Over a half century ago, humanists and scientists established this field together, believing we cannot uncover the mysteries of the human mind from within disciplinary silos. Yet the field is retreating back to those silos at a historical moment that demands interdisciplinary research; as humanists and scientists grapple with the impacts of technologies such as AI and social media on human minds and societies.
The HooCS Hub is a three-year initiative incubating UVA's existing strengths to establish us as a leader in the interdisciplinary study of the mind. We integrate humanistic and philosophical inquiry — from contemplative traditions to analytic philosophy — into the core of cognitive science, while using empirical methods and results to inform humanistic scholarship. We promote this inquiry through vertically-integrated collaborations between faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates. Although HooCS is deliberately capacious, spanning any topic in humanistic cognitive science, much of our research is organized around two related topics: spontaneous thought in an anxious world, and human agency and autonomy in the age of AI.
HooCS promotes interdisciplinary collaborations through two core activities:
- We host a biweekly HooCS Lab during the academic year. HooCS Lab is a venue for works-in-progress talks, external speakers, training sessions, reading groups, etc.
-
We will host our inaugural week-long Summer Seminars in Humanistic Cognitive
Science (SSHooCS) from August 10–14th. SSHooCS will bring
together a small cohort of humanist and scientist students for six
intensive days of cross-disciplinary training, collaboration, and
research development. Participants will leave with a fully developed
interdisciplinary research project that they will complete in the
following Academic Year, a network of collaborators across UVA, and
the concrete skills to pursue interdisciplinary research and funding
in HooCS and beyond.
Click here for SSHooCS 2026 projects and schedule. Applications for 2027 will be accepted in Spring 2027.
Core Team
Faculty
Zac Irving is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and the director of HooCS. Zac's work develops an action-theoretic, scientific, and ethical theory of attention that makes room for spontaneous forms of attention such as mind-wandering. He uses methods from both analytic philosophy and scientific psychology, grounding his scientific theorizing and methods in philosophical foundations.
Dr. Jennifer MacCormack is an Assistant Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Virginia and directs the Virginia Affect and Interoception Laboratory. Broadly, she studies how the brain represents the body's internal states through interoception — and how those representations contribute, consciously and unconsciously, to emotion and social behavior across the lifespan.
David Danks is the Polk JSF Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, AI, & Data Science. He works on ethical, psychological, and policy issues around AI and robotics, as well as building novel AI systems and computational cognitive models.
Justin Bernstein is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at UVA. His work focuses on topics at the intersection of applied ethics and political philosophy — especially public health ethics.
Michael R. Sheehy, PhD, is Research Associate Professor and the Director of Research at the Contemplative Sciences Center, University of Virginia. He is founding Principal of the CIRCL — Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab — a transdisciplinary experimental lab that investigates contemplative practices through lenses of the history of religions, cognitive sciences, and empirical phenomenology.
Extended Community
Affiliated Faculty
Justin Snedegar is a philosophy professor at UVA working in ethics, moral psychology, and practical reasoning.
Associate Professor in the Psychology Department. My Emotion and Behavior Lab studies how laughter and conversation help people connect despite their differences, how strangers become friends, and the strategies people use to become well-connected to their communities. We use a variety of methods, including computer vision and acoustic analysis to measure nonverbal behavior, topic modeling, social network analysis, digital interventions, and experience sampling.
