Prof.
Stephan
Lewandowsky
United Kingdom
University of Bristol & University of Potsdam & University of Western Australia
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol whose main interest is in the pressure points between the architecture of online information technologies and human cognition, and the consequences for democracy that arise from those pressure points.His research examines the consequences of the clash between social media architectures and human cognition, for example by researching countermeasures to the persistence of misinformation and spread of fake news in society and how platform algorithms may contribute to the prevalence of misinformation. He is also interested in the variables that determine whether or not people accept scientific evidence, for example surrounding vaccinations or climate science.He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council, a Wolfson Research Merit Fellowship from the Royal Society, and a Humboldt Research Award from the Humboldt Foundation in Germany. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science (UK) and a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science. He was elected to the Leopoldina (the German national academy of sciences) in 2022. He was identified as a highly cited researcher in 2022 by Clarivate, a distinction that is awarded to fewer than 0.1% of researchers worldwide.