Center For The Impossible
A research center at Rice University dedicated to the study of anomalous and “impossible” experience, closely associated with Jeffrey Kripal’s Archives of the Impossible. Karin Austin is its Managing Director (a role she holds jointly with the John Mack Institute). The Center is the institutional home, alongside Harvard, of the John Mack archives transferred in 2022, and hosts a multidisciplinary team conducting metadata analysis of experiencer reports across multiple archival collections — work co-led with Amanda Focke of Rice’s Woodson Research Center.
The Center co-sponsored the July 2026 “Breaking the Taboo” symposium.
Vault appearances
- src-breaking-the-taboo-uap-contact-symposium-2026-05 — co-sponsor; Austin presents the Center’s experiencer-archive metadata analysis.