Professor Veena Kumari
Professor - Psychology
Quad North 148
- Email: veena.kumari@brunel.ac.uk
- Tel: +44 (0)1895 268053
Summary
Professor Veena Kumari obtained a PhD in Psychology from Banaras Hindu University, India in 1993 prior to joining the Institute of Psychiatry, London for post-doctoral research. She became a Beit Memorial Research Fellow in 1999, a Wellcome Senior Fellow in Basic Biomedical Science in 2002, and a Full Professor in 2006 at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (formerly known as the Institute of Psychiatry), King’s College London, UK. She joined Brunel University of London in Jan 2018 as Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Centre for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience (CCN).
Her research interests include the neurobiological effects of pharmacological and psychological treatments in psychosis, neurobiology of violence in mental illness, psychobiology of addiction, and personality and brain functioning. Prof Kumari has over 300 publications in reputed psychology, psychiatry and neuroscience journals and received various national and international awards for her research including the Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance of Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, USA (1999), research fellowship from BEIT Memorial Foundation (1999-2002), the BAP (British Association of Psychopharmacology) Clinical Psychopharmacology Prize (2002), Wellcome Senior Fellowship in Basic Biomedical Science (2002-2009), the prestigious Humboldt Research Award (2014), and most recently a Bonn International Fellowship (2020/21).
Professor Kumari has supervised a large number of post-graduate and doctoral students and served in editor or editorial board member roles for a number of psychology and psychiatry journals.
Newest selected publications
Chauhan, S., Cooper, H., Pandey, R. and Kumari, V. (2026) 'The Roles of Neuroticism and Schizotypy in Emotional Abuse and Mental Health Association: A Replication and Extension of Alnassar et al. (2024)'. Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, 24. pp. 1 - 8. ISSN: 2666-9153 Open Access Link
Hui, ITK., Chung, TH-F., Cheung, S-H., Biabani, N., Drakatos, P., Bucks, RS., et al. (2026) 'Sleep-Related Attentional Bias in Insomnia: A Drift Diffusion Model Approach'. Journal of Sleep Research, 0 (ahead of print). pp. 1 - 11. ISSN: 0962-1105 Open Access Link
Kumari, V. and Otermans, PCJ. (2026) 'Chatbot psychosis: moving beyond recognition to mechanistic understanding and harm reduction'. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 0 (ahead of print). pp. 1 - 3. ISSN: 0007-1250 Open Access Link
Vanova, M., Aldridge-Waddon, L., Puzzo, I. and Kumari, V. (2025) 'Neural Correlates of Reward Processing: Impact of Individual Differences in Preference for Prosocial Interactions'. Brain and Behavior, 15 (9). pp. 1 - 12. ISSN: 2162-3279 Open Access Link
Alkan, E., Kumari, V. and Evans, S. (2025) 'Hippocampal subfield volumes and memory deficits in schizophrenia'. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 352. pp. 1 - 7. ISSN: 0925-4927 Open Access Link