Axel Cleeremans (Ph.D. 1991, Carnegie Mellon) is a Research Director with the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) and a professor of Cognitive Psychology at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium), where he heads the Consciousness, Cognition and Computation (CO3) Group and directs the Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences. His research is essentially dedicated to understanding the mechanisms of consciousness and the differences between information processing with and without consciousness. Cleeremans argues that consciousness is the result of unconscious learning mechanisms through which the brain continuously redescribes its interactions with itself, with the the world and with other people. To explore these issues, Cleeremans has obtained two prestigious advanced grants from the European Research Council, the first (2014-2019) dedicated to the "how" of consciousness (its mechanisms), the second (2022-2027) dedicated to the "why" of consciousness (its functions).
Cleeremans has acted as president of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology and of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. A member of the Royal Academy of Belgium, he is also the Field Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Psychology. In 2015, we was awarded the prestigious Ernest-John Solvay prize for human sciences by the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research.
Axel Cleeremans has authored and edited several books as well as numerous articles dedicated to consciousness and implicit cognition. In 2009, he edited, together with Tim Bayne and Patrick Wilken, the "Oxford Companion to Consciousness".
