Marieke van Vugt, associate professor, Bernoulli Institute of Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial intelligence, University of Groningen

Abstract: We spend a substantial amount of our waking time mind-wandering. Despite popular belief, I do not think that is a bad thing necessarily. It can be very useful for planning and creativity. Mind-wandering only becomes harmful when it is so "sticky" that it is difficult to disengage from, and therefore interferes with other important tasks of life. For this reason, I am very interested in tracking such sticky thinking in the lab. I will demonstrate different methods to assess sticky thinking, for example based on computerized tasks or based on EEG. I will show how rumination may be a particular example of sticky thinking, and how this sticky thinking differs between individuals who are more versus less depressed.  Finally, I will present my ideas on how different contemplative practices may help to reduce the stickiness of our thinking.

Nicola Simonetti, Bridging Fellow in Medical Humanities, Department of English Studies, Durham University

Abstract: This talk explores obsessive-compulsive time through a novel nonclinical lens, proposing a speculative time complex that challenges obsessive-compulsive presentist frameworks. Drawing on first-person lived experience, epistemologies of time, and Critical Disability Studies, I argue that obsessive-compulsive distress is not rooted in the present but originates in an ‘elsewhen’ shaped by an uncertain past and a speculative future. To conceptualise this temporal dynamic, I engage with Armen Avanessian and Suhail Malik’s theory of the postcontemporary, which deprioritises the present by demonstrating how time is increasingly structured by the past and, especially, the future. Like the postcontemporary, I propose that obsessive-compulsive temporality can be approached in a way that no longer requires explaining the movement of the past and the future on the basis of the present, and I reflect on the importance of language – particularly its tense and modal structures – as a critical site for articulating the speculative time complex of obsessive-compulsive disorder.