Dr. Kendler has pursued for most of his career substantive research in psychiatric genetics and epidemiology. He has, during that time, actively published at the interface between psychiatric genetics and psychiatric nosology. He was on the Task Forces of DSM-III-R and DSM-IV. For DSM-5, he chaired the Scientific Review Committee. He is currently vice-chair of the American Psychiatric Association's DSM Steering Committee which is overseeing changes in DSM-5. He has, over the last 15 years, written extensively on topics at the interface between psychiatry and philosophy including a number of papers on nosology. Along with Dr. Parnas, he edited volumes that included the papers and commentaries for the three prior Philosophy of Psychiatry conferences: i) Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry: Explanation, Phenomenology and Nosology, ii) Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry: II Nosology, and iii) Philosophical Issues in Psychiatry: III: the nature and sources of historical change.
Dr. Parnas has published in the domain of psychopathology, epidemiology and pathogenesis of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Over the past 25 years he has been active at the interface of psychopathology and philosophy, especially philosophy of mind and phenomenology, applying these to the issues of psychiatric diagnosis and classification. His most recent work deals with experiential trait-phenotypes of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, in particular the anomalies of self-experience. He is a co-founder of and a senior researcher at an interdisciplinary theoretical institute, Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, integrating psychiatry, philosophy, and hermeneutics in interaction with cognitive science and neuroscience. Along with Dr. Kendler, he edited three prior volumes on philosophy and psychiatry (vide supra).