Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore PhD FBA FMedSci FRS
Professor Blakemore is the Chair of Psychology in the Social Sciences (2000) at the University of Cambridge, where she leads the Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Group and serves as Deputy Head of Department for Research. Her group's research focuses on the development of the social brain in adolescence, with a particular emphasis on mental health, social cognition, peer influence and sensitivity to social context. Their work integrates behavioural science, neuroimaging and developmental methods, and has made contributions to both theory and policy in adolescent mental health, public health and education.
Professor Blakemore studied Experimental Psychology at Oxford University (1993-1996) and did a PhD (1996-2000) at the UCL Functional Imaging Lab with Professors Chris Frith and Daniel Wolpert, investigating the self processing in schizophrenia. She took up a Wellcome Trust International Research Fellowship to work in Lyon, France, on social cognition in schizophrenia. This was followed by a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. She was a Group Leader at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience until 2019, when she took up a Chair in Psychology at Cambridge.
At Cambridge, Professor Blakemore develops and teaches undergraduate courses, supervises final-year and doctoral research students, and contributes to curriculum development and student wellbeing initiatives. She previously co-directed the Wellcome PhD Programme in Neuroscience at UCL and has trained a generation of researchers, many of whom now hold academic posts internationally and other science-related positions in private and public sectors. She has served on advisory boards and scientific panels, including at the Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences, The Times Education Commission, the UK Department for Education and Singapore’s Ministry of Education and National Research Foundation.
Professor Blakemore co-authored The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education. with Professor Dame Uta Frith. She was interviewed on The Life Scientific. Other public engagement activities include a play, Brainstorm, written and performed by teenagers and shown at the National Theatre in London, and a TED talk at TEDGlobal 2012. Her first solo book, Inventing Ourselves: the secret life of the teenage brain, was published in 2018 and was awarded the Royal Society Book Prize 2018, the British Psychological Society Book Prize 2020 and the Hay Festival Book of the Year 2018.
Professor Blakemore has been awarded national and international prizes for her research, including the British Psychological Society Doctoral Award, the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal for early career research, the Swedish Neuropsychology Society Award, the Young Mind & Brain Prize, the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award, the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize, the British Psychological Society Presidents' Award, the International Union of Psychological Science Quadrennial Major Advancement in Psychological Science Prize, the British Cognitive Neuroscience Society Mid-Career Award and the Flux Society Huttenlocher Award. She is a High Table Fellow at Newnham College and Gonville and Caius and a Bye-Fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She was elected an Honorary Fellow of St John's College Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy, the American Association of Psychological Science, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.
Professor Blakemore's publications can be found on Google Scholar.
Email: sjblakemore@psychol.cam.ac.uk
X: @sjblakemore
Bluesky: @sjblakemore.bsky.social
If you are interested in joining the Blakemore Lab, please get in touch. Please note that you should preferably have an educational background in experimental psychology and/or neuroscience. Please note that we are not taking on MPhil students in 2026-27.
