Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

Introduction – The CSC Sensemaking Symposium 2025 From October 9–11, 2025 , the University of Virginia’s Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC), UVA brought together artists, scientists, scholars, and contemplatives from across the world for the Sensemaking Symposium , a two-and-a-half-day immersion into how humans perceive, interpret, and create meaning in an age defined by complexity. Hosted in the newly opened Contemplative Commons , the event dissolved traditional boundaries, merging research with lived experience. Through sound installations, musical performances, guided contemplations, and cross-disciplinary conversations, participants entered a space where inquiry became sensory, where knowledge was not only discussed but embodied. The symposium framed sensemaking as both an inner and collective act, linking neuroscience and mysticism, technology and ritual, sound and silence . Across four thematic sessions, Sensemaking , Hearing , Seeing , and Extrasensory , presenters ...