Professor Carl Hayden Smith (GB)

Carl Hayden Smith is a media theorist, researcher, and practitioner exploring how technology reshapes human perception, agency, and experience. He is Associate Professor of Media at the University of East London, founder of the Museum of Consciousness at Oxford University, and co-founder of both the Cyberdelics Nexus and the Centre for Human Agency.

He is developing Hyperhumanism, a framework that treats technology as a context for cultivating innate human capacities rather than replacing them. His wider research spans Contextology, embodied cognition, spatial literacy, Umwelt hacking and sensory augmentation.

Carl has helped secure more than £10 million in research funding and has contributed to major Leonardo, Erasmus+, FP7, Horizon 2020 and XPRIZE initiatives. During the Horizon 2020 WEKIT project, he used immersive technologies to train astronauts and surgeons. He has delivered more than 300 invited lectures and keynotes across 40 countries and published over 50 academic papers. His collaborators have included Google DeepMind, Microsoft, Epic Games, Unity, Samsung, Hanson Robotics and Integrity.AI.