What is CIRCL?

CIRCL: Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab is a dynamically experimental collaboratory in UVA’s Contemplative Commons, plus an interdisciplinary network of research faculty on Grounds and beyond dedicated to investigating practices and experiences of human transformation.

Upcoming Event

SENSEmaking: A Symposium on Contemplative Technologies
October 9–10, 2025
Contemplative Sciences Center, Contemplative Commons
University of Virginia
Free for the UVA community (students, faculty, and staff) - Open to the public - Registration required

Join us for SENSEmaking, a two-day public symposium exploring contemplative practices, immersive technology, and the senses. The symposium is an incubator of ideas and experiences designed to catalyze cutting-edge research on how contemplative practices and immersive technologies can revitalize the human capacity for sensemaking.

The symposium brings together a diverse transdisciplinary community, including:

• Scholars of religion, philosophy, and history
• Scientists in psychology, medicine, and neuroscience
• Artists, technologists, and makers
• Contemplative practitioners from a range of traditions

Mission

To catalyze and advance transdisciplinary research on contemplation to generate new knowledge and know-how to enhance human well-being.

Vision

The vision of CIRCL is bringing excellence, rigor, and teamwork to study how diverse contemplative practices and experiences work in bodies and minds, cultures and ecologies, and intersubjectively. Our work leverages cutting-edge research in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, and technology at the intersections of lived experience, innovation, and application. To execute this vision, the CIRCL convenes interdisciplinary teams of scholars, scientists, artists, makers, and practitioners in collaboration with specialists in contemplative research to generate novel solutions to personal, social, and global challenges. 

Ethos

The 4 principles that guide research culture and studies in the CIRCL are:

1. Contemplation: Studies have a contemplative dimension.
2. Collaboration: Studies involve 2 or more collaborators with distinct expertise to ensure multifaceted inquiry.
3. Experimentation: Studies abide by the spirit of inquiry and discovery; creative novel experiments and multi-method approaches are encouraged.
4. Meaning-Making: Studies have discrete tangible outputs that make meaningful contributions; including publications, follow-up funding, real-world applications, etc. 

Activities

• Generating: We bring in-house expertise on contemplation and research methods to initiate and catalyze
critical research from pilots to multi-year projects with collaborators to generate new knowledge and know-how.
• Facilitating: We support stakeholders as partner-consultants in the generation of solutions that enhance flourishing in their target applications.
• Hosting: We provide lab space and services to host innovative interdisciplinary research for faculty collaborators at UVA and beyond.

Model

CIRCL performs 2 vital activities in a looping fashion:

Research

Seek to understand the underlying dynamics, processes, and mechanisms of contemplative practices and correlative emergent experiences.

Innovation

Design, augment, and enhance contemplative practices sensitive to individual differences and contexts, based on transdisciplinary research.

Themes

Primary themes that drive research are:

• Nature, studies on how contemplation can enhance human connection with nature.
• Technology, studies on how transformative technologies can augment contemplative experiences and how contemplation can enhance being human at interfaces with technology.
• Arts, studies on how the arts (visual, musical, performative, digital, etc.), specifically aesthetic experiences, and contemplation can be complimentarily leveraged for human transformation. 

* Also, the lab undertakes faculty-driven and needle-moving studies that are not limited to these themes.

Contemplative Commons

The CIRCL is housed in the Contemplative Commons, a new multipurpose 57,000 square-foot building located in the heart of UVA’s Grounds, dedicated to contemplation and flourishing. Spaces includes two 21’ x 23’ research pods, a media room, incubatory tanks, and the Conservatory – a state-of-the-art 25’ x 27’ immersive sonic-luminous room that supports the transformative power of 3D multichannel sound diffusion along with full color-spectrum architectural and theatrical lighting for contemplative experimentation.

Studies 

Studies in the CIRCL are one or a combination of the following: 

• Student-Centered, investigating how to enhance the wellbeing of young adults, involving students as participants and research assistants.
• Faculty-Driven, collaborating with UVA faculty, based on their research interests.
• Needle-Moving, generating high impact research that is field-building.