Ben Alderson-Day

I am an Associate Professor and member of the Developmental Science research group at Durham. I'm also a fellow of the Institute for Medical Humanities and the Wolfson Institute for Health and Wellbeing.

From 2012 to 2022 I was a member of Hearing the Voice, an interdisciplinary project that explored the topic of voice-hearing (or auditory verbal hallucinations). Joining originally as a postdoctoral researcher, I was one of six co-applicants for Hearing the Voice's second Wellcome award in 2015, and in 2020 I became Associate Director of the project (working alongside PI Charles Fernyhough and Co-Director Angela Woods). The project is internationally recognised for its interdisciplinary approach and contribution to psychosis research, which produced over 200 outputs. In 2019 we launched Understanding Voices, the world's largest web resource for supporting people with distressing voices.

I am the co-founder and co-chair of the Early Career Hallucinations Research (ECHR) group, a network of over 250 ECRs in 24 countries conducting research on hallucinations and related topics.

Prior to working at Durham I completed my PhD in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and worked as a Research Co-ordinator for Lime Trees Child & Adolescent Mental Health team in the NHS in York.

My research is broadly focused on mental health and neurodiversity. This includes work on psychosis and autism primarily, but has also involved research on inner speech, mental imagery, executive functioning, categorisation, and perception. My most recent research has concerned "felt presence": the sensation that someone is present without any sensory cues. Such experiences occur in psychosis, Parkinson's, epilepy, bereavement, survival situations, and around the boundaries of sleep.