Paul Harrison

My research addresses several aspects of translational psychiatric neuroscience. It has been funded mainly by grants from the Medical Research Council, Wellcome, NIHR, and now by BD². The research is a team effort, relying on the expertise and commitment of many exceptional colleagues and collaborators in the Department, elsewhere in the Medical Sciences Division, and beyond Oxford. 

An important starting point for the work is that many genes which affect risk of developing psychiatric disorders have been identified, but much less is known about how, why, and when, these factors increase risk. Underlying my research is the assumption that they operate to affect brain development, plasticity, and function, and our work is designed to investigate this. I have a particular interest in the risk genes which represent potential treatment targets, such as voltage-gated calcium channels. In addition I am involved in projects exploring the psychiatric and neurological sequelae of Covid-19 infection, and the possibility that vaccines may protect against dementia.

I trained in medicine and psychiatry in Oxford and London, and was a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow before being appointed to a Clinical Readership in 1997. I was awarded a Chair in 2000. I have published over 370 papers (Scopus h-index 86; Google scholar 105; 49,000 citations), and several books, including The Neuropathology of Schizophrenia, The Shorter Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, Lecture Notes: Psychiatry, and Schizophrenia with Daniel Weinberger. I am a Deputy Editor for Biological Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science. I have served on various  funding committees, chaired an NHS Research Ethics Committee, and sat on the REF 2021 Unit of Assessment 4 sub-panel. I have supervised 22 DPhils. Awards include the CINP/Paul Janssen Schizophrenia Prize (1998), the British Association for Psychopharmacology (BAP) Senior Clinical Prize (1999), the A.E. Bennett Award of the Society of Biological Psychiatry (2004), the Joel Elkes Research Award of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (2005), the CINP Lilly Clinical Neuroscience award (2010), the ECNP Clinical Neuropsychopharmacology award (2012), and the BAP Lifetime Achievement Award (2023). I was President of the BAP 2014-2016.