BAMΞ Concludes First Research Sprint on Mathematical Phenomenology

The Bamberg Mathematical Consciousness Science Initiative (BAMΞ) has completed its inaugural research sprint, devoted to Mathematical Phenomenology, a research programme that connects the formal tools of mathematics with the philosophical and first-person study of conscious experience. Over the course of four workshops held between November 2025 and March 2026, the sprint brought together close to 500 registered participants from institutions across Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania.

The sprint's programme spanned a deliberately broad thematic arc. Early workshops surveyed the state of the art in mathematical phenomenology and its historical roots – from Husserlian phenomenology to contemporary formal models of self-consciousness – before turning to connections with neighbouring research programmes in consciousness science, including quality-space theories, structuralism, and psychometrics. Later workshops examined the paradigmatic assumptions that shape the field as a whole, with contributions addressing both naturalistic and contemplative approaches to consciousness, first-person methodologies and their integration into empirical research, and methodological challenges in the empirical study of subjective experience. The sprint concluded with an intensive, week-long cabin retreat organized in collaboration with the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, in which an interdisciplinary group of researchers worked on foundational questions in and novel approaches to computational neurophenomenology.

Across all four workshops, invited speakers from leading institutions – among them MIT, UC Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Monash University, the ?cole Normale Supérieure, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University – presented on topics including the geometry of phenomenal experience, causal and algebraic structures of consciousness, phenomenal measurement, mathematical signatures of irreducibility, and models drawn from Buddhist contemplative traditions. In addition to the workshops, the sprint featured a series of standalone invited talks, including contributions on novel embodiments of mind, attentional distortions of subjective perception, and the categorical differences between human experience and artificial intelligence. Recordings of most talks are publicly available on BAMΞ's YouTube channel.

The sprint was complemented by internal discussion sessions and research seminars for BAMΞ members, ensuring that the intellectual momentum generated by the workshops feeds directly into ongoing collaborative work. BAMΞ's next thematic sprint on Measurement Theory is already under way, and a further sprint on AI Consciousness is in preparation.

Further information on BAMΞ's upcoming events is available on our Research Activities page. Interested parties are cordially invited to join our mailing list for further announcements.