Brenda Dunne was manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, whose remote viewing and psychokinesis research made important theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of parapsychology. After the closure of PEAR in 2007, Dunne co-founded the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL).
- Dunne helped define PEAR not only administratively but experimentally, contributing to both the remote-perception and psychokinesis programmes.
- It reports that more than two decades of PEAR remote-perception trials yielded above-chance matching in both real-time and precognitive conditions, which Dunne interpreted as evidence for non-local psi.
- Dunne and Robert Jahn shared fully in every aspect of the PEAR work and were equally committed to combining scientific rigour with a warm and welcoming laboratory environment.
Life and Career
Brenda J Dunne was born on 21 February 1944 in New York City. She died on 17 June 2022 in Silver Spring, Mayland.
Dunne was awarded a degree in psychology and the humanities from Mundelein College in Chicago in 1976 and a Master’s degree in human development from the University of Chicago in 1979. She received an honorary PhD in Wisdom Studies from Ubiquity University in 2022.1Jeff Dunne, (personal communication 27 August 2026).
At Mundelein, Dunne successfully replicated remote viewing work carried out at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). Shortly after graduating, encouraged by her earlier work in psi research, she accepted a position as laboratory manager at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, which had been set up by Robert Jahn in the basement of the engineering department at Princeton University. From 1979 until the lab’s closure in 2007, Dunne supervised research and scholarly activities and oversaw research projects of numerous visiting scholars and student interns.
Dunne was appointed councillor of the Society for Scientific Exploration in 1986 and later served on its executive committee as education officer. She was also president and treasurer of the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL), which she co-founded with Robert Jahn.
Contributions to Parapsychology
Interpersonal Factors
Dunne was intuitive and empathetic, qualities that found a ready home at PEAR.2Nelson (2022). She and Jahn were fully aligned on the importance of establishing a comfortable environment for participants, and both were equally dedicated to ensuring that the PEAR work was carried out with the utmost scientific rigour. She worked to ensure that the working environment was comfortable and home-like. She also encouraged volunteer subjects to view psi abilities as entirely normal, which helped establish a relaxed atmosphere conducive to better operator performance in psi experiments.
Encouraged by her success replicating SRI’s remote viewing (RV) experiments, Dunne developed her own program at PEAR, using the term ‘remote perception’. She worked in close collaboration with Jahn throughout. In a typical experiment, the percipient attempted to engage telepathically with an ‘agent’ who had travelled to a distant location, gaining impressions of what that person was seeing. The agent completed a 30-item binary checklist, indicating the presence or absence of elements such as water or vegetation. The percipient similarly encoded his or her impressions together with sketches and written descriptions. In later experiments that tested for precognition, the percipient’s impressions were recorded before the agent visited the distant location
Over more than two decades, a database of 650 trials were generated. Matching of percipient and agent-coded statements revealed a significantly above-chance concordance (p = 3 x 10-8) in both real-time and precognitive trials. The distance between percipient and agent had no influence on scoring rates, with similar success rates recorded at distances of five miles and 5000 miles. Dunne argued that this invariance with time and space demonstrated the non-local nature of psi.3Jahn & Dunne (2003).
International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL)
Dunne and Jahn founded the International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL) in 1996, eleven years before PEAR officially closed in 2007. To help disseminate the PEAR approach, ICRL produced conferences and related material that encouraged researchers from the wider academic community to cultivate alternative ways of understanding consciousness and reality. Gatherings have been held since 1994, exposing mainstream researchers to cutting-edge work in the fields represented by PEAR and ICRL. Dunne served as Editor-in-Chief of ICRL Press, under which imprint she was responsible for bringing eighteen titles into publication. ICRL is still in operation, under the leadership of Dunne’s son Jeff.4Jeff Dunne, (personal communication 27 August 2026).
Society for Scientific Exploration
As education officer of the Society for Scientific Exploration, founded in 1882, Dunne created its Young Investigators branch, whose early members are now forging links with the wider academic community.
Broughton Hall
Through the ICRL, Brenda and Jeff Dunne arranged for the PEAR equipment to be relocated to Yorkshire, England in 2021, where it is on display as part of an educational ICRL exhibit in the Centre for Liminal Studies at Broughton Hall. 5Jeff Dunne, (personal communication 27August 2026).
Selected Works
Dunne co-authored two books with Robert Jahn. In Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, they describe the first decade of research carried out at PEAR, discussing its wider implications for understanding consciousness and the connection between physical devices and mind.6Dunne & Jahn (1987).
Being and Biology: Is Consciousness the Life Force? edited by Dunne and Jahn, is a collection of essays by writers including Rupert Sheldrake, William Bengston and Rollin McCraty, on parapsychological evidence that points towards consciousness as a fundamental force in nature.7Dunne & Jahn (2017).
Michael Duggan
Works Cited
Dunne, B.J., Dobyns, Y.H., & Intner, S.M. (1989). Precognitive Remote Perception, III: Complete Binary Database with Analytical Refinements. PEAR Technical Report 89002, Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, Princeton Univ. School of Engineering/Applied Science, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Dunne, B.J., & Jahn, R. G. (2003). Information and uncertainty in temote perception research. Journal of Scientific Exploration 17/2, 207-41.
Dunne, B.J., & Jahn, R.G. (2017). Being and Biology: Is Consciousness the Life Force? Eldersburg, Maryland, USA:ICRL Press.
Jahn, R.G., & Dunne, B.J. (1987). Margins of Reality. The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World. Orlando, Florida, USA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Nelson, R.D. (2022). For Brenda Dunne, fond memories and deep respect. Journal of Scientific Exploration 36/2, 448-49.