Emily Holmes, PhD, DClinPsych is a Professor in Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden and is affiliated to the Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience.
Holmes received her degree in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, UK. She is also a clinician and completed a clinical psychology training doctorate at Royal Holloway University of London, and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience in Cambridge, UK. She became Professor in 2010 at the University of Oxford. Holmes is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA), Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien in Uppsala (KVS) and a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences. She is the recipient of several international awards, including from the American Psychological Association and the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Holmes serves on the Board of Trustees of the research charity “MQ: Transforming Mental Health.”
Holmes’s work as a clinical psychologist has fueled her research questions. She is interested in psychological treatment innovation in mental health – both in creating new techniques and reaching more people. Under the wider umbrella of mental health science, her approach brings together psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, math, and more. Holmes’s research has demonstrated that mental imagery has a more powerful impact on emotion than its verbal counterpart. Her group is particularly interested in understanding and reducing intrusive memories (“flashbacks”) after traumatic events, whether a severe car accident, traumatic childbirth, war, or events during the COVID-19 pandemic. To this end her research team in Uppsala are creating a hub studying intrusive memories internationally, with current collaborations including UK, Iceland, Colombia and Australia.