Emily Holmes

Professor Emily Holmes, PhD, DClinPsych leads PERCEPT – Mental Imagery and Mental Health at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University. Holmes received her BA (Hons) in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, UK, and her Masters in Social Sciences at Uppsala University, Sweden.

She is also a clinician and completed a clinical psychology training doctorate at Royal Holloway University of London, and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. She became Professor in 2010 at the University of Oxford. She is the recipient of several international awards, including from the American Psychological Association, the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Rudbeck Medal from Uppsala University.

Holmes serves on the Board of Trustees of the research charity "MQ Foundation". She became a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien) in 2018. She was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Arts UK in 2023. Her research is underpinned by a core interest in mental health science, and the translation of basic findings to create innovations to improve psychological treatments. She is particular interested in the persistence of intrusive memories after trauma exposure (e.g. for healthcare workers in the COVID-19 pandemic), and deriving novel ways to more easily treat this that could be scalable and brief.