Steve Fleming - Speaker

Steve Fleming, speaker. Steve is a prominent psychologist and neuroscientist at University College London. He serves as Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Experimental Psychology, Group Leader at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry, and Principal Investigator in the Department of Imaging Neuroscience, where he heads the Metacognition Group. He earned a BA Hons in Psychology and Physiology from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCL, followed by postdoctoral training at New York University.

Steve is an expert in self-awareness and metacognition, focusing on how we reflect on ourselves. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and received several awards, including the British Academy Wiley Prize in Psychology in 2016, the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Psychology in 2018, the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal in 2019, and election as a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in 2023. His interest in consciousness and metacognition in AI led to a major European Research Council grant in 2023 for his project “ConsciousComputation,” aimed at developing computational models of human conscious experience.
In 2024, he received the Francis Crick Medal and Lecture from the Royal Society for his work on the neurobiology of conscious experience and the neural basis of metacognition. Steve has explored self-awareness in various fields, including politics, climate change, leadership, decision-making, and education. He has provided training and lectures on self-awareness to companies like Slaughter and May.
His 2021 book, Know Thyself: The New Science of Self-Awareness, has been translated into seven languages and featured in the Financial Times, The New Yorker, and on the cover of New Scientist. He has appeared on notable podcasts, including Sam Harris’ Making Sense, and has contributed articles to New Scientist, Scientific American, Financial Times, and Aeon.