Valerie Hardcastle

Valerie Gray Hardcastle recently joined Northern Kentucky University as the St. Elizabeth Healthcare Executive Director of the Institute for Health Innovation and the Vice President for Health Innovation. An internationally recognized scholar, Hardcastle is also the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Consciousness Studies and the author of five books and over 200 essays. She studies the nature and structure of interdisciplinary theories in cognitive science and has focused primarily on developing a philosophical framework for understanding conscious phenomena responsive to neuroscientific and psychological data.  Most recently, she is investigating how the nature of addiction can shed light on what it means to be human. Hardcastle received an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in cognitive science and philosophy from the University of California, San Diego; a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Houston; and a bachelor’s degree with a double major in philosophy and political science from the University of California, Berkeley.