Professor Johan Bolhuis

Johan Bolhuis is Affiliated Professor at the Department of Psychology, and Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neurobiology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He received his MSc in Biology (cum laude) at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands (1984). His association with Cambridge started when, as an undergraduate, he spent 14 months as a guest student at the Department of Zoology. He obtained his PhD in Zoology (cum laude) at Groningen (1989), and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge. During the 1990s, he was a Member of High Table at King’s College and Sidney Sussex College. He was an Associate Professor at the Institute of Biology, Leiden University, The Netherlands, before being appointed to his current role by Utrecht University in 2001. He was a Visiting Scholar at Sidney Sussex College (2014–15) and at St Catharine’s College (2016–21). He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Catharine's College. In 2024 he was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, where he is now a Life Member.

Professor Bolhuis has served as President of the Royal Dutch Zoological Society (2001–07). He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Behavioural Processes, and editor of seven books, including Brain, Perception, Memory(OUP, 2000), and, together with linguist Martin Everaert, Birdsong, Speech, and Language (MIT Press, 2013). He is co-editor of the academic textbook The Behavior of Animals (2nd Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022).

QuoteTrained as a biologist, I have increasingly become interested in the study of the human mind, from a cognitive, neural as well as a philosophical point of view. I am particularly interested in language, as a window to the mind. Language involves a mind-internal computational mechanism that serves as an engine for human thought. Viewing language as a biological system, we can study its structure, evolution, development and neural mechanisms. It has become clear that language has given the human mind unbounded creativity, that is unique in the animal kingdom.

• Dutch Zoology Prize, of the Royal Dutch Zoological Society, 2001.
• Editor-in-Chief of Behavioural Processes.