The Paul Janssen Lecture has been a regular feature of the academic calendar at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience for nearly 20 years.
Lecturers are chosen on the basis of their global eminence in the field of neuroscience with a focus on schizophrenia. The annual lecture is named in honour of Belgian pharmacologist Paul Janssen (1926–2003) noted for discovering various drugs important to psychiatry, such as haloperidol, and who founded Janssen – the pharmaceutical company which sponsors the event.
Recent lectures
23rd Paul Janssen Lecture - 18 December 2024
"Neuroinflammation and psychosis: a new dawn or bleak midwinter?"
Speaker: Professor Rachel Upthegrove MBE
Rachel Upthegrive MBE is Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre. She trained in Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital, University of London and completed Psychiatry training in Birmingham.
Her PhD investigated longitudinal outcomes of depression and suicidality in first episode psychosis. Her clinical work is in the Birmingham Early Intervention Service. Her current research focuses on the identification of novel treatments for early stages of schizophrenia, and she leads the Psychosis Immune Mechanism Stratified Medicine Study (PIMS), a collaborative multi-stage project investigating inflammatory mechanisms and phenotypic profile of psychosis.
22nd Paul Janssen Lecture - 16 November 2023
"Unveil Psychosis Heterogeneity: Stratification via Circuit-Based Biomarkers"
Speaker: Professor Kim Q Do
Kim Q Do is Professor of Translational Psychiatry at Lausanne University, Switzerland, and Visiting Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London, UK.
Until 2019, she was Director of the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience (Department of Psychiatry, Lausanne University Hospital). Her unique research bridges basic neurobiology and clinical investigation, with a focus on understanding the causes and mechanisms of psychosis.
21st Paul Janssen Lecture - 7 December 2022
"Towards the aetiological diagnosis and treatment of psychosis"
Speaker: Professor Sir Robin Murray
Robin Murray is Professor of Psychiatric Research at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, and indeed has spent most of his working life there apart from one year at NIMH in the USA.
He was one of the first to suggest that schizophrenia was in part a neurodevelopmental disorder, and he and his colleagues have contributed to the understanding that environmental factors such as obstetric events, drug abuse and social adversity dysregulate striatal dopamine and thus increase the risk of psychosis.
20th Paul Janssen Lecture - 22 January 2020
"Precision Psychiatry: Paradigm shift in neuroscience and clinical care or empty hope?"
Speaker: Professor Nikolaos Koutsouleris
Professor Nikolaos Koutsouleris is the Coordinator of the EU-FP7 funded project PRONIA ('Personalised Prognostic Tools for Early Psychosis Management').
He serves as consultant and Head of the Centre for Adolecent Psychiatry and Transitional Youth Mental Health and the Section for Neurodiagnostic Applications in Psychiatry at the Department of Psychiatry, Ludwig-Maximilian-University, Munich (LMU).