Research
Mette works on how insights from consciousness science, literary and philosophical traditions and contemplative practice can inform approaches to meaning-making and flourishing in contemporary times and a potential post-human future. Her research explores questions of identity and thriving in our time of scientific authority, anti-anthropocentric sentiments, new transformative neuro- and biotechnologies and growing existential uncertainty.
Her current projects include investigating the convergence of Eastern contemplative insights with Western philosophical and literary traditions and using literature to create concepts of selfhood and existential frameworks that are compatible with the neuroscientific explanations of consciousness and contemporary science.
Her work also explores perceptual diversity, particularly through research on aphantasia, and its connections to different ways of experiencing reality and selfhood. Additionally, she works on the intersection of psychedelic experiences and literary insights, investigating the role of the poetic and aesthetic in altered states of consciousness that lead to psychological transformation.
Institutional affiliations
Associate Fellow at the Centre for Eudamonia and Human Florishing, University of Oxford
Visiting Academic at the Oxford Uehiro Institute, University of Oxford
Hosted research fellow at the Interacting Minds Centre, Aarhus University
Associated fellow at the Hub at Oxford for Psychedelic Ethics, Oxford University
Academic background
Junior Research Fellowship, Linacre College, University of Oxford, 2021-23
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in English, King’s College London, 2020.
Fulbright Fellowship. University of California, Berkeley, US, 2014 – 2015
MA in Modern Culture, University of Copenhagen, 2012.
Selected publications
Uncertainty and Undecidability in Twentieth Century Literature and Literary Theory (Routledge, 2022)
Interdisciplinary perspectives on consciousness (Neuroethics topical collection, 2024)
Literary Theories of Uncertainty (Bloomsbury, 2021)
“Literary Neuroexistentialism: Coming to Terms with Materialism and Finding Meaning in the Age of Neuroscience through Literature” in Neuroethics
“In Defence of Obfuscation” in THINK Magazine
“The Value of Literature for Consciousness Research and Ethics” in Journal of Consciousness Studies
“Swinging of the Breath: Undecidability and Zones of Indistinction in Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel” in German Life and Letters