Personal Announcement from Dr. Jim Tucker – Director of DOPS

Dear friends,

The DOPS team remains extremely active, as you can see from our recent e-newsletter. But first, a personal announcement: I will be retiring from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the Division of Perceptual Studies on January 1, 2025.

It has been my privilege and honor to contribute to the DOPS mission for over 25 years. That mission remains what it was when I arrived—to explore the relationship between mind and brain and the possibility that consciousness survives physical death. When I joined, we were doing that primarily by studying two phenomena: near-death experiences and children’s reports of past-life memories.

While that work has continued unabated, the DOPS of today is a far different place than it was 25 years ago. In 2008, the division moved from its home in a modest clapboard house to greatly expanded space in a new, modern building downtown. Along with continuing the survival work, DOPS established a state-of-the-art neuroimaging lab there—a milestone made possible by a major gift from one of our loyal supporters.

We have since added new faculty and new approaches to the core questions of mind/brain and survival—this again being thanks to the generosity of DOPS supporters. The new approaches include work on out-of-body experiences, after-death communications, mystical experiences, and consciousness theory. In my ten years as director, we have also enlarged our outreach efforts and significantly increased public awareness of the research.

I was thrilled 25 years ago to carry on Ian Stevenson’s studies of children’s past-life memories. I am thrilled now to hand off that work to the next generation of researchers. Marieta Pehlivanova and Philip Cozzolino will lead it, and they have already been spearheading new projects.

I’m also thrilled that DOPS is healthy and continues to grow. A search for my successor is now well underway. We recently welcomed the finalist candidates for the position of Bonner-Lowry Professor and Research Director of DOPS, and I have full confidence that the work will continue to thrive under new research leadership and the continued administrative leadership of Maggie Guggenheimer.

I would like to extend my deepest thanks to everyone who over the years has supported the unique research we do here at DOPS. This work matters—it’s important—and it’s been so great to be a part of it.

Sincerely,

Jim B. Tucker, MD