Edmund Sonuga-Barke


Edmund James Stephen Sonuga-Barke, is a developmental psychologist and academic. He has held professorships at King's College London and the University of Southampton.

Early life and education

Edmund James Stephen Barke was born in Derby in 1962 to David Barke and Carmel, née Hughes; he later double-barrelled his surname with that of wife, Funke Sonuga, whom he married in 1987. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from the University College of North Wales, Bangor, in 1984, and four years later the University of Exeter awarded him a doctorate for his thesis "Studies in the development of economic behaviour".

Career

After a year as a research psychologist at the University of London, Sonuga-Barke was appointed to a lectureship at the Institute of Psychiatry in 1988. The next year, he moved to the University of Southampton where he was lecturer, reader and professor of developmental psychopathology. He was head of Southampton's Department of Psychology from 1997 to 2002. In 2017, Sonuga-Barke joined King's College London as Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience. In 2016, he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and in 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.
According to the British Academy's profile, his research focuses on "The developmental psychopathology and neuroscience of child and adolescent mental health and disorder".