Nazanin Derakhshan

Nazanin Derakhshan is a Professor of Experimental Psychopathology, and Founder and Director of The BRiC Centre (Building Resilience in Breast Cancer) in the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at The University of Reading, UK. Prior to joining Reading University in 2022, she spent 18 years in The Department of Psychological Sciences at Birkbeck University of London, UK, where she was promoted to Full Professor in 2012. She was voted a key transformational figure in 'Birkbeck Inspires, 200th anniversary', for transforming the lives of thousands of people through the research she conducts at BRiC, in 2022.

Nazanin has conducted extensive research into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying anxiety and depressive vulnerability, as well as developing and applying neurocognitive interventions designed at reducing vulnerability and promoting resilience, especially in vulnerable populations. She is highly cited in her field and has published widely in top internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals, as well as holding various editorial duties. She was Associate Editor for Cognition and Emotion from 2005 to 2013; Editor in Chief of Anxiety, Stress and Coping from 2010 - 2013, Editor of the Special Issue in Cognition and Emotion (Information processing, affect, and psychopathology: A Festschrift in honour of Michael W. Eysenck’s career. She was also Guest Editor in Emotion in 2010.

Naz has been the holder of prestigious fellowships such as The Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship, as well as at The University of Oxford and St John's College Oxford. She was elected a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in 2016. Naz has won multiple awards in teaching (as voted by students) and in research for theoretical advances in knowledge and public engagement and outreach. She has given over 100 (including invited) talks and chaired numerous national and international symposia, including invited talks at the Royal Society, the British Academy, the Wellcome Trust and Breast Cancer Now.

According to her own words, Naz has been fortunate to work with and supervise numerous amazing PhD, Masters and Undergraduate students who continue to move the field of anxiety and depression in profound ways. She thoroughly enjoys teaching Advanced Quantitative Methods and Statistics and began teaching statistics when she was a postgraduate student back in 1997 all the way through to 2021.

Naz has a passion for running and spinning and is a breast cancer warrior.