Citizen Pharmacy: Destabilizing Knowledge Hierarchies in Psychoactive Science

Description: 

This project will broaden the scope of UW–Madison’s Psychedelic Research Collection through alternative press publications, zines, ephemera, and other “outsider” print materials. The funds will also supplement a larger “Citizen Science in Pharmacy Collection,” representing the ways that both enterprising individuals and marginalized communities have used non-traditional methods to advance drug discovery and research.

The Edward Kremers Reference Library and Archives, jointly managed by the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy and the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, houses a burgeoning collection of print materials tracing the history of psychedelics and psychoactive substances. The collection supports student and faculty research in the School and beyond, having drawn the attention of both the Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances and the community-based Madison Psychedelic Society.

The EKRLA is now seeking funding to enhance the collections with complementary citizen science materials. Citizen science can be broadly defined as science done by non-professionals external to scientific institutions. Given the legal issues surrounding psychedelic drugs, much of the research into their therapeutic uses has been conducted outside of mainstream pharmaceutical channels. Similarly, the print cultures surrounding these illicit operations have also often existed on the periphery of traditional publishing routes.

These “underground” publications lend new perspectives on how scientific knowledge creation can occur outside of hegemonic channels.

By focusing on the paired areas of alternative print cultures and alternative scientific methods, the EKRLA is working towards a more inclusive understanding of the history of psychedelic science specifically and the history of self-experimentation and pharmaceutical citizen science more broadly.

Principal Investigator:

Lucas Richert, Professor of Pharmacy

Co-Principal Investigator:

Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, Curator/History of Health Sciences Librarian