Alva Noë studied philosophy at Oxford and Harvard. He has been a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, since 2003. Noë's main fields of research include human perception, consciousness, and the theory of art. Many of his works are based on the thesis that consciousness does not simply take place within us, but is created by humans, or "performed." His publications include Out of Our Heads (Piper 2010), Action in Perception (2014), and Strange Tools (2015). In his books, he deals with the essence of art as a philosophical practice.

Scholars from Germany and abroad provide insights into their research within the framework of the Dahlem Humanities Center Lectures (DHCL). The lecture series is aimed at other members of the university as well as a wider public, and admission is free. Each year the Dahlem Humanities Center (DHC) organizes up to ten lectures. DHC is a platform for internal as well as international networking of humanities research at Freie Universität Berlin. In cooperation with numerous research institutes and cultural institutions in the region as well as international partner universities, DHC creates and organizes different types of event programs and discussion formats at the interface between university and practice.