Professor Francesca Happé CBE FBA

Francesca Happé is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She completed her BA (HONS) in Experimental Psychology at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, and then held an MRC studentship to complete her PhD at the MRC Cognitive Development Unit (UCL) supervised by Prof. Uta Frith. After working as a junior scientist at the MRC CDU, and holding a Human Frontiers Fellowship in Boston MA, she joined the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, at the Institute of Psychiatry. She has worked there ever since, being Director of the Centre from 2012 to 2019.

Her research focuses on autism. She has explored social cognition and ‘mentalising’ difficulties. She is also actively engaged in studies of abilities and assets in autism, and their relation to detail-focused cognitive style. Some of her recent work focuses on mental health on the autism spectrum, and under-researched groups including women and the elderly. 

She is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences, a past-President of the International Society for Autism Research, and has received the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal and President’s Award, Experimental Psychology Society Prize, and Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award. She is co-author/editor of two recent books - Autism: A New Introduction to Psychological Theory and Debate (with Sue Fletcher-Watson), and Girls and Autism: Educational, Family and Personal Perspectives (with Barry Carpenter and Jo Egerton). In 2021 she was awarded a CBE for her services to the study of autism.