Congratulations to retired Prof. Harvey Irwin, who has been selected to receive the PA’s 2023 Outstanding Mentor Award. This award goes to a PA member whose mentorship activities have advanced the discipline of parapsychology.

Harvey Irwin is lauded for his role as an academic psychologist supervising parapsychological works. During his career-defining position at the University of New England, he oversaw the creation of the popular textbook An Introduction to Parapsychology (which has been reprinted in five editions by McFarland & Company). Irwin also authored the practical book Education in Parapsychology: Student and Instructor Perspectives (Australian Institute of Parapsychological Research; 2013).

Until his formal retirement in 2003, Harvey Irwin was an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology, University of New England, Armidale, Australia, where he taught psychopathology. Subsequently, he continued his research as an honorary research associate at his former university. When this position was not renewed, he joined Manchester Metropolitan University as a Visiting Research Fellow.

Harvey's parapsychological research interests relate to belief in the paranormal, psychological bases of parapsychological experiences (in particular, extrasensory experiences, out-of-body experiences, and near death experiences), the phenomenology of parapsychological experiences, and parapsychology from the perspective of the sociology of science. His non-parapsychological research interests include the origins of dissociative disorders.

The Outstanding Mentorship Award was created to acknowledge the efforts of PA members to remedy the significant disparities in the availability of career resources for students of parapsychology worldwide. In service to the PA’s international mission to promote scholarship and scientific inquiry into currently unexplained aspects of human experience, the recently established PA Mentorship Program connects professionals and college/university students around the globe.

More information about the PA's Career Awards can be found at: https://www.parapsych.org/section/27/career_awards.aspx