About
Hi! My name is Dr. Harry Witchel. I am a neuroscientist, author, educator and academic. I do three things: 1) Research, 2) Training and Education, and 3) Media & Public Engagement with Science. I also do a bit of admin 🙂
I am passionate about making science accessible to the public — because it is fascinating. The above videos are examples of explanations and commentary I have presented on television. For my serious scientific research, see my academic papers. For examples of experiments for television and corporate clients that I have run , see this page.
The methods of my research involve detecting and measuring nonverbal behaviour (body language), movement, and physiology (the heart’s activity, skin conductance, etc). The topics that interest me are relationships and communication, music and soundscape, and what we think and feel when presented with the psychological events (conversations, movies, video games) in the amazing and unexpected world we live in. You could say I look at the relationship between the mind and the body, which some scientists call embodiment.
Short biography
I am well-known as a popular communicator. I have appeared numerous times on BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, and Radio 3, as well as appearing repeatedly on BBC Television, ITV, and television overseas. I appear as a commentator, such as on BBC Television’s Newsnight, or as made-to-order scientific investigator, such as on Bang Goes the Theory. I am a very popular lecturer at science festivals throughout the UK, including Edinburgh, Winchester, British Science Association, Cheltenham, and The SciTech Spectacular in Pittsburgh. Other lectures include The Royal Society (eleven times), The Royal Institution, the Dana Centre for the Brain, and the University of Bristol, where my one my lectures broke all the attendance records in the three year history of their lecture series. I am based in Brighton, and I have spoken locally at low-key venues including Café Scientifique, Rotary Club, Nerd Night, etc.
I also consult and lecture in the business and legal community on topics concerning communication, assessment and education. My writings on these topics have appeared nationally in The Financial Times, The Times Higher Educational Supplement and the Times Educational Supplement. I provide training, facilitation, and workshops on a host of communication topics to groups as wide ranging as Honda, the national annual conference of the Solicitors’ Family Law Association (now called Resolution) and Nokia.
I am currently Professor of Physiology at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School (UK). I received my Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Columbia University, my Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of California at Berkeley, and was a Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Medical School in Bristol (UK). I am often invited to give lectures at multinational corporations, prestigious academic institutions and government regulatory bodies including Pfizer, Novartis, Harvard and the MHRA (Institute of Directors, London). In 2003 I was a Visiting Professor at the University of Florence, Italy, and in 2004 I received the national honour of being awarded by the British Science Association The Charles Darwin Award Lecture. I have published over 60 peer-reviewed papers in the scientific literature, and my 8 grants have brought in over £700,000 (US $1.25 million) for research. To see a list (or download) my academic papers click on the link. I also write books; the most recent in 2022 was an edited collection (with Michael Lee) for education researchers, called Technologies in Biomedical and Life Sciences Education<\a>. In 2020 I wrote a study guide for students on how to write essays and other scientific writing called Writing for Biomedical Sciences Students. I also written some blog posts on teaching students how to write essays based on that book.
If you are a student interested in doing research in my lab, my current research focus is on mind wandering, which is a family of mental states similar to daydreaming; this is a subfield of neuroscience, applied psychology and consciousness studies.