Archive of Author | Peter Halligan & David Oakley

About Peter Halligan & David Oakley

Professor Peter Halligan CBE is an internationally recognised psychologist and neuroscientist who, with Professor Anthony David, played a pioneering role in establishing cognitive neuropsychiatry as a vibrant subdiscipline within the cognitive neurosciences. In 2003, he secured one of the largest investments from the Office for Science and Technology to establish Cardiff University’s Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), the first and largest multimodality imaging facility in Wales. In 2011, as Chair and Academic lead of the Welsh Crucible - a unique, all Wales staff leadership programme for early career researchers, his team won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Contribution to UK HE Leadership Development. At Cardiff University he played a key role in the delivering several major research developments before being appointed chief executive of the Learned Society of Wales in 2014 and Chief Scientific Adviser for the Welsh Government in 2018. Professor Halligan is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and was awarded our Spearman Medal for outstanding research published in 1993, and the Presidents’ Award for outstanding contributions to psychology in 2005. David Oakley is is Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, UK. He is Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Editorial Consultant: International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Associate Editor: APA Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Reasearch and Practice.

Professor Peter Halligan CBE is an internationally recognised psychologist and neuroscientist who, with Professor Anthony David, played a pioneering role in establishing cognitive neuropsychiatry as a vibrant subdiscipline within the cognitive neurosciences.

In 2003, he secured one of the largest investments from the Office for Science and Technology to establish Cardiff University’s Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), the first and largest multimodality imaging facility in Wales. In 2011, as Chair and Academic lead of the Welsh Crucible – a unique, all Wales staff leadership programme for early career researchers, his team won the Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Contribution to UK HE Leadership Development.

At Cardiff University he played a key role in the delivering several major research developments before being appointed chief executive of the Learned Society of Wales in 2014 and Chief Scientific Adviser for the Welsh Government in 2018. Professor Halligan is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and was awarded our Spearman Medal for outstanding research published in 1993, and the Presidents’ Award for outstanding contributions to psychology in 2005.

David Oakley is is Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, UK. He is Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Editorial Consultant: International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Associate Editor: APA Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Reasearch and Practice.

Articles with Peter Halligan & David Oakley

A social evolutionary purpose for consciousness

Scientific accounts of consciousness are a growing subject of public interest, but also academic disagreement with several rival theories in contention. Reasons include the ambiguous use of the polysemous term, the contamination of scientific accounts by intuitive explanations, and the neglect of an evolutionary perspective. Taking a social evolutional account, we propose that much of the mind’s cognitive architecture developed to promote species survival and social well-being and that subjective awareness is not causally efficacious, but rather a brain generated accompaniment for neuro-cognitive outputs that facilitate collective social communication and social change through the cultural transmission of beliefs, feelings, ideas, and behaviours.

Is it time to give up on consciousness as ‘the ghost in the machine’?

Peter Halligan is currently Hon Professor of Neuropsychology at Cardiff University and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Welsh Government .
Following training in psychology and philosophy at University College Dublin, and 14 years in the Departments of Clinical Neurology and Experimental Psychology at Oxford University he moved to Cardiff in 2000
Awarded the British Psychological Society’s Presidents’ Award for outstanding contributions to Psychology in 2005, he is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, Irish Psychological Society, Royal society of Biology and Academy of Medical Sciences . He was co-editor of the Cognitive Neuropsychiatry.

David A Oakley is Emeritus Professor of Psychology, UCL and Honorary Professor, School of Psychology, University of Cardiff.
“My earliest research was into the cortical and subcortical substrates of learning and memory (primarily in the context of Pavlovian conditioning and instrumental learning). More recently I have been interested in hypnosis and suggestion as topics in their own right, as therapeutic techniques, as a means of exploring pain, consciousness and the voluntary control of action, and in the creation of experimental analogues of clinical conditions, such as conversion disorder and functional pain.”

Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Editorial Consultant: International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Associate Editor: APA Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Reasearch and Practice.