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HOPE
(Hub at Oxford for Psychedelic Ethics)
HOPE is an interdisciplinary research group working on psychedelic ethics, law, and social policy. Established at Oxford in 2023 and now based at Johns Hopkins within the Yaden Lab, HOPE brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to develop ethical frameworks for the responsible integration of psychedelics into medicine and society.
The programme addresses critical issues including informed consent in clinical trials, integration practices, research oversight, therapeutic boundaries, and policy development across medical and non-medical contexts. HOPE's approach emphasizes collaborative, consensus-driven work that translates ethical analysis into practical guidance for researchers, clinicians, regulators, and policymakers.
Core Team
David B. Yaden, PhD
Founding Director
David B. Yaden, PhD, is the Roland R. Griffiths Professor of Psychedelic Research at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research interests include characterizing the acute subjective effects of psychedelics, investigating their capacity to impact well-being and worldview, as well as testing their treatment potential. He leads clinical and experimental trials on psilocybin and has published on ethical issues of psychedelics in venues such as JAMA. He is co-author of the book, The Varieties of Spiritual Experience with Oxford University Press.
Brian D. Earp, PhD
Founding Director
Brian D. Earp, PhD, MSc, MPhil, is a leading neuroethicist based at the National University of Singapore with more than 10 years of research experience in psychedelic ethics. Brian is Director of the Oxford-NUS Centre for Neuroethics and Society, and Associate Director of the Yale-Hastings Program in Ethics and Health Policy, Yale University and The Hastings Center. Brian is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Ethics, published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which was recently ranked the number one bioethics journal in the world. Brian is co-author of Love Drugs: The Chemical Future of Relationships (Stanford University Press, 2020), the first mainstream book for a general audience focused on the ethics of psychedelic-assisted couples counseling, both at the individual and societal levels.
Eddie Jacobs, DPhil
Associate Director
Eddie Jacobs, DPhil is a postdoctoral fellow in psychedelic science at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford's Department of Psychiatry, where his Wellcome Trust-funded research examined the bioethical dimensions of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Eddie coordinated the development of HOPE's foundational Consensus Statement. His research on psychedelics has appeared in the American Journal of Bioethics, the British Medical Journal, the Lancet: Child and Adolescent Health, Neuroethics, and Frontiers in Psychology. Outside of the academy, he provides ethics teaching to practitioner training courses, and writes The Ethics Corner for 'The Psychedelic Practitioner'.
Katherine Cheung, MA
Policy Coordinator
Katherine Cheung, MA is a PhD student in Bioethics and Health Policy at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, she worked as a Health Science Policy Analyst at the National Institutes of Health, focusing on data sharing policy. She holds an MA in Bioethics from New York University. Katherine's research examines ethical dimensions of psychedelic-assisted therapy, including the value of psychedelic experiences and the role of meaningfulness in medical contexts. She drafted the HOPE Working Group's response to a congressional Request for Information on psychedelic therapies. Her work has been published in the International Review of Psychiatry, the Journal of Medical Ethics, and the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics."
Senior Advisors
Lori Bruce, D.Bioethics, HEC-C
Deputy Director, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics; Yale
Community Ethics
Keisha S. Ray, PhD
John P. McGovern, MD Professorship of Oslerian Medicine; UT Health Houston
Equity and Structural Determinants of Health
I. Glenn Cohen, HD
Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics; Harvard
Psychedelic Law and Regulation
Holly Fernandez-Lynch, JD, MBE
Associate Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Penn
Medical Ethics and Law
Julian Savulescu, MBBS PhD
Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics; Oxford
Ethics of novel technologies
Neil Levy, PhD
Associate Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, Penn
Philosophy of Mind; Psychology and Ethics
Convening
HOPE convenes an annual gathering leading figures working on psychedelics from academia, policy, clinical practice, and industry. These gatherings produce guidance documents, policy recommendations, congressional testimony and scholarly publications that inform psychedelic research, regulation, and practice.
Hopkins-Oxford Psychedelic Ethics Meeting (2025)
Oxford Union, August 2025
(Outputs under development)
Hopkins-Oxford Psychedelic Ethics Summit (2024)
Washington D.C., August 2024
Produced our response to a Congressional RFI on Psychedelic Medicine
Inaugural Hopkins-Oxford Psychedelic Ethics Workshop (2023)
University of Oxford, August 2023
Produced the Hopkins-Oxford Psychedelics Ethics (HOPE) Working Group Consensus Statement, the most-read article in The American Journal of Bioethics for 2024-2025, and now available in six languages.