Susan Jane Blackmore (born 29 July 1951) is a British writer, lecturer, sceptic, broadcaster, and a visiting professor at the University of Plymouth.

[1] In 1973, Susan Blackmore graduated from St Hilda's College, Oxford, with a BA (Hons) degree in psychology and physiology.

In 1980, she earned a PhD in parapsychology from the same university; her doctoral thesis was entitled "Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process.

"[2] In the 1980s, Blackmore conducted psychokinesis experiments to see if her baby daughter, Emily, could influence a random number generator.

It lasted about three hours and included everything from a typical "astral projection," complete with a silver cord and duplicate body, to free-floating flying, and finally to a mystical experience.

Everything looked clear and vivid, and I was able to think and speak quite clearly.In a New Scientist article in 2000, she again wrote of this: It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena and launched me on a crusade to show those closed-minded scientists that consciousness could reach beyond the body and that death was not the end.

[15] She acted as one of the psychologists who was featured on the British version of the television show Big Brother,[16] speaking about the psychological state of the contestants.

At the congress she joined Scott Lilienfeld, Zbyněk Vybíral and Tomasz Witkowski on a panel on skeptical psychology which was chaired by Michael Heap.

[23] Her prediction on the central role played by imitation as the cultural replicator and the neural structures that must be unique to humans in order to facilitate them have recently been given further support by research on mirror neurons and the differences in extent of these structures between humans and the presumed closest branch of simian ancestors.

First is the truths that many contain in their mystical or spiritual traditions; including insights into the nature of self, time and impermanence [...] The other is the rituals that we humans seem to need, marking such events as birth, death, and celebrations.

[27][28] Blackmore is an advocate of secular spirituality, an atheist, a humanist, and a practitioner of Zen, although she identifies herself as "not a Buddhist" because she is not prepared to go along with any dogma.