Prestigious Award for founding Head of Department

Posted on 8 May 2015

Professor Peter Venables receives his Lifetime Achievement Award at BPS conference

Awards-Prof P Venables - 1479 - presented by Dr Richard Mallows - photo by Tony Dale

The annual British Psychological Society conference in Liverpool saw our founding Head of Department, Peter Venables, receive his BPS Lifetime Achievement Award for Research. The Lifetime Achievement award is made each year to a psychologist with an outstanding record of personal achievements who has also made significant contributions to the advancement of psychological knowledge.‌

Professor Venables was a pioneer of the application of physiological measures to psychological questions. His perspective was influential in establishing the experimental and biological flavour of research and teaching in Psychology at York, which remains to this day. Professor Venables became a world-leading authority on schizophrenia and has made important and diverse contributions to cognitive, neuroanatomical, neurodevelopmental fields, and, now in his early 90s, he remains research active.

Professor Venables and his colleagues have been instrumental in building an environment here at York where psychological research and scholarship is flourishing. As a department, we are delighted that Professor Venables has become the third successive York-based recipient of the BPS Lifetime Achievement Award, following on from Professors Alan Baddeley and Andy Young.