Manos Tsakiris - Biography#

Manos Tsakiris (born 1977, Athens, Greece) studied psychology (BSc, Panteion University Athens, 1995 - 1999), philosophy (MSc in Philosophy of Mental Disorder, King’s College, London, 1999-2000), and cognitive neuropsychology (MSc, UCL, 2000 - 2001) before completing his PhD (2006) in psychology and cognitive neurosciences at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL. In 2007, he joined the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, where he became Professor of Psychology in 2013. At Royal Holloway, he leads the Lab of Action & Body (LAB). His research is highly interdisciplinary and uses a wide range of methods to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms that shape the experience of embodiment, self and social relatedness.

He currently holds two visiting appointments, at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London and at the University of Luxembourg.

In 2014, he became the 4th recipient of the prestigious Mind & Brain Young Investigator Prize for ‘[…] his pioneering studies on the bodily self-consciousness and on the motor awareness, and for his approach that bind together the neuroscientific evidence and the theoretical reflection coming from his philosophical background’. The Prize-winner is nominated and voted by past recipients (e.g Dennet, Tomasello, U Frith, Sperber, Rizzolatti) and is awarded to early career scientists whose innovative research has led to significant breakthroughs in the understanding of the mind and brain. In 2015, he was awarded the 22nd Experimental Psychology Society Prize (UK), in recognition of ‘distinguished research achievements by experimental psychologists at an early stage in my career’. In 2016 he was the Inaugural NOMIS Foundation Distinguished Scientist Award that enabled him to develop the interdisciplinary “Body & Image in Arts & Science’ (BIAS) project at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London. In 2019, he was elected Fellow of Association for Psychological Science. He was successful in securing two European Research Council Grants (Starting and Consolidator). He has served in the editorial board of Cognition, as Associate Editor (2015-17) and Senior Editor (2018 - 2020), and has organized several national and international meetings, including the annual Interdisciplinary Summer School on Social Cognition in the island of Aegina, Greece (2013 - 2020).