Fifty Years of Research

Our founder, Dr. Ian Stevenson interviewing a subject in Myanmar circa 1975

Over the last 50 years of active research, the UVA DOPS faculty have collected 2500 cases, most of which have been found outside of the United states. Members of the research staff at the Division of Perceptual Studies have published numerous articles and books about these cases. Of these 2500 cases, over 2300 have been coded and entered into our SPSS data base to date. During most summers for the past 15 years, first year UVA medical students research interns, assist us in coding the field notes on 200 variables. They develop research projects based on access to the original research files. These research interns apply various statistical analyses to look into the accumulated data thus far, for patterns and trends.

Publications about the research being done at DOPS into memories of previous lives:

We invite you to view a list of books on reincarnation written by our research faculty. The list includes books written by our director, Dr. Jim Tucker, as well as the long list of books authored by our esteemed founder, Dr. Ian Stevenson.  Among the many ground breaking books by Dr. Stevenson is his comprehensive two volume set, Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, Volumes I and II. In this 22268 page, two volume set, Dr. Stevenson wrote about his extensive research into cases of birthmarks and birth defects which appeared to strongly correlate to memories of a past life in particular subjects. Dr. Stevenson also wrote an abridged version of this research called Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect.

In 2013, Dr. Jim Tucker, authored his second book on the topic of cases of children who report memories of a previous life. In his most recent book Return to Life, Dr. Tucker describes the research into strong American cases being carried out at DOPS. In Tucker’s first book, Life Before Life, he reviews forty years of research into children who report memories of previous lives. This book contains some accounts of interesting American cases, as well as descriptions of Dr. Ian Stevenson’s classic cases in Asia.

In addition to books, the faculty have published many academic papers on this subject in a wide variety of professional journals. For a list of academic papers specifically on the study of past life memories written by our faculty, please see Publications on Past-life Memories.