Professor Francesca Happé

Francesca Happé is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London. Her research focuses on autism. She has explored typical and atypical social cognition,  as well as 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. In 2021 she was awarded a CBE for her services to the study of autism.