Barrett, Lisa
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is University Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory (IASLab) at Northeastern University (with Dr. Karen Quigley). She also holds research appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research focuses on the nature of emotion from both psychological and neuroscience perspectives. Dr. Barrett has been called “the most important affective scientist of our time” and “the deepest thinker on <the nature of emotion> since Darwin” and has been honored with election to numerous scientific societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Barrett is a prolific scientist, publishing over 200 peer reviewed scientific papers and she has edited five scientific volumes, including the 4th edition of the Handbook of Emotion, published by Guilford Press. Her research has been called “groundbreaking,” “inspirational,” and “transformative,” and has been continuously funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation for over 20 years. She has received numerous research awards, including a Director’s Pioneer Award from the US National Institutes of Health for transformative research. She has also received awards for her service, including the 2018 Lifetime Mentor Award from the Association for Psychological Science and the Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science from the American Psychological Association. In 2019, she will serve as president of the Association for Psychological Science. Dr. Barrett educates the public about emotion and neuroscience, with articles in the New York Times, Popular Science, Nautilus, Cosmo, and Time Magazine (for a full list, see lisafeldmanbarrett.com). Her TED talk, published in January 2018, has been viewed over 2M times. Her research has been discussed in over 200 pieces published on major media outlets, including on NPR, NBC, and Invisibilia, and in The Wall Street Journal, WIRED magazine and Time magazine. Dr. Barrett educates lawyers, judges and other legal actors about emotion, neuroscience and the law as part of her work for the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior, and in 2007, she testified before US Congress in support of basic behavioral research. Her popular science book, How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017, and was described as “brilliant and original”, “mind blowing”, and “a delight to read.”