Associate Professor Andrew Kemp awarded prestigious fellowship of the Association for Psychological Science in December 2017

Associate Professor Andrew Kemp from the Department of Psychology has been recognized for outstanding contributions to psychological science by the Association for Psychological Science

Associate Professor Kemp is the first academic at Swansea University to be honoured with an APS fellowship. The APS is the leading international organization dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders. For one to be considered for fellowship one must have made sustained outstanding contributions to scientific psychology over more than ten years. Potential fellows must be nominated by a current APS fellow and have letters of support from two other leading researchers in the field.

After completing his PhD, Kemp was awarded two nationally competitive, research fellowships in cognitive neuropsychiatry at the University of Sydney in Australia. He then moved to Brazil to work as a Visiting Professor at the University of São Paulo where he conducted research on the largest epidemiological research project on the health and wellbeing of the Brazilian population. He then secured a permanent post in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University, commencing in February 2016.

Recently, Kemp’s research has focused on heart rate variability, a non-invasive marker of vagal function that is extracted from the electrocardiogram. The vagus nerve is considered to be one of the most important nerves in the human body and Kemp has shown that vagal function is impaired in patients with common mental disorders and their offspring. He has also demonstrated that these changes may subsequently increase risk for morbidity and premature mortality from a host of disorders and conditions.

Kemp’s recent scientific outcomes, here and here, include furthering understanding of the link between psychological moments and mortality, bridging the disciplinary divide between psychological science to epidemiology. His recent lay press article in The Conversation describing his recent research activities won the Welsh Editor’s award for journalistic excellence.