Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (born 11 August 1974) is

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professo ...

Psychology Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...

and Cognitive Neuroscience at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and co-director of the

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

PhD Programme in Neuroscience at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

Sarah Jayne Blakemore's

Education

Blakemore was educated at Oxford High School and

St John's College, Oxford St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded as a men's college in 1555, it has been coeducational since 1979.Communication from Michael Riordan, college archivist Its founder, Sir Thomas White, intended to pr ...

, where she graduated with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree in

Experimental psychology Experimental psychology refers to work done by those who apply experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ human participants and animal subjects to study a great many topics, in ...

in 1996. She completed postgraduate study at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

where she was awarded a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

in 2000 for research co-supervised by

Daniel Wolpert Daniel Mark Wolpert Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS FMedSci (born 8 September 1963) is a British medical doctor, neuroscientist and engineer, who has made important contributions in computational biology. He was Professor of Engineering at the ...

and Chris Frith.

Research and career

After her PhD, she was appointed an international postdoctoral research fellow from 2001 to 2003 to work in Lyon, France, with Jean Decety on the perception of causality in the human brain. This was followed by a

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

Dorothy Hodgkin Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (née Crowfoot; 12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994) was a Nobel Prize-winning British chemist who advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of biomolecules, which became essential fo ...

Fellowship (2004–2007) and then a

Royal Society University Research Fellowship __NOTOC__ The Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) is a research fellowship awarded to outstanding early career scientists in the United Kingdom who are judged by the Royal Society to have the potential to become leaders in their fi ...

(2007–2013) at UCL. She is actively involved in increasing the

public awareness of science Public awareness of science (PAwS) is everything relating to the awareness, attitudes, behaviors, opinions, and activities that comprise the relations between the general public or lay society as a whole to scientific knowledge and organization. ...

, frequently gives public lectures and talks at schools and acted as scientific consultant on the BBC series ''The Human Mind'' in 2003. Blakemore has an interest in the links between neuroscience and education and co-wrote a book with Uta Frith on ''The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education''. She co-directs the

four Year PhD Programme in Neuroscience at UCL and serves as

editor-in-Chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

of the journal ''Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience''. Blakemore's research covers the development of social cognition and

decision-making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...

during human

adolescence Adolescence () is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age of majority). Adolescence is usually associated with the ...

. She is a member of

BrainWaves working group for neuroscience and the Royal Society Vision Committee for Maths and Science Education 5-19.

Awards and honours

Blakemore has been awarded a number of prizes including the

British Psychological Society The British Psychological Society (BPS) is a representative body for psychologists and psychology in the United Kingdom. History It was founded on 24 October 1901 at University College London (UCL) as ''The Psychological Society'', the org ...

Doctoral Award 2001, the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal for outstanding early career research 2006, the Lecturer Award 2011 by the Swedish Neuropsychology Society and the Young Mind & Brain Prize from the

University of Turin The University of Turin (Italian language, Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Torino'', UNITO) is a public university, public research university in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont (Italy), Piedmont region of Italy. It is one of the List ...

2013. Blakemore was awarded the

's Rosalind Franklin Award in 2013 and the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize in 2015. Blakemore held a prestigious

from 2007 to 2013. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: In March 2015 Blakemore was interviewed by

Jim Al-Khalili Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili ( ar, جميل صادق الخليلي; born 20 September 1962) is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in scie ...

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

's ''

The Life Scientific ''The Life Scientific'' is a BBC Radio 4 science programme, presented by Professor Jim Al-Khalili , in which each episode is dedicated to the biography and work of one living scientist. The programme consists of an interview between Al-Khalili ...

''. In July 2018 Blakemore was elected

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # ...

(FBA). The

awarded Blakemore the Presidents' Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge in August 2018 which provides a lifetime membership to the Society. Blakemore was the winner of the 2018 Royal Society Prize for Science Books for her book ''Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain''. She won Suffrage Science award in 2011.

Personal life

Blakemore is the daughter of Sir

Colin Blakemore Sir Colin Blakemore, , Hon (1 June 1944 – 27 June 2022) was a British neurobiologist, specialising in vision and the development of the brain. He was Yeung Kin Man Professor of Neuroscience and senior fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for Ad ...

and Andrée Blakemore (née Washbourne). She has two sons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne 1974 births Living people People educated at Oxford High School, England Academics of University College London Royal Society University Research Fellows Blakemore, S British women scientists Alumni of St John's College, Oxford British neuroscientists British women neuroscientists Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology People associated with The Institute for Cultural Research