Hearing the Voice is an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Wellcome Trust which aims to provide a better understanding of what it is like to hear a voice when no one is speaking. Usually associated with severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, voice-hearing is also an important aspect of many ordinary people’s lives. We are examining this phenomenon from as many different relevan
t perspectives as possible. In addition to considering the subjective experience of voice-hearing, we are investigating their underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms, and the ways in which voice-hearing experiences have been interpreted and represented in different cultural, historical and religious contexts. Our research team includes academics from cognitive neuroscience, cultural studies, English literature, medical humanities, philosophy, psychiatry, psychology, theology and arts-in-health, as well as clinicians, academics and ‘experts by experience’ from the Hearing Voices Network, Intervoice and Voice Collective.