I joined the Psychology Department at Aston University and the School of Life and Health Sciences in May 2013, having spent the previous 7.5 years at the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging and the School of Psychology at Glasgow University.
I obtained my Diploma in Psychology from Mannheim University in 1995. I also finished my PhD in Mannheim (1999) while working at the Collaborative Research Centre "Situated Artificial Communicators" at Bielefeld University. I was then employed as a researcher at the Wolfson Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Wales, Bangor and subsequently in the MEG (Magnetoencephalography) Laboratory at Duesseldorf University before coming back to the UK.

I am currently member of the steering group of the Aston Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment (AIHN) and co-director of the Aston Laboratory for Immersive Virtual Environments (ALIVE). 

My research interests include attention, executive function, and working memory, as well as embodied social alignment at various levels of complexity, ranging from simple mirroring to high-level mentalizing. More recently, I have investigated these research interests with my team using novel multi-method approaches to individual and group differences in relation to culture, autism, compulsive checking, and neurocognitive decline in ageing. We are applying behavioural methods, Virtual Reality (VR) and neuroimaging, such as Magnetoenecephalography (MEG), Electroencephalogram (EEG), and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), to understand high-level cognitive functions, characteristic of our species, in their typical and clinical expressions. Additionally, I collaborate at Aston University as well as nationally and internationally with colleagues on a variety of projects and including additional methods such as (f)MRI, transcranial electric stimulation, and new MEG technology using optically pumped magnetometers. 

05/2013 -- Present     Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the School of Life & Health Sciences, Aston University
09/2010 – 04/2013     Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow
08/2005 – 08/2010     Lecturer, Department of Psychology, Glasgow University
05/2002 – 07/2005     Research Officer, MEG Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Duesseldorf University
02/2001 – 04/2002     Research Officer, School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor
02/1995 – 01/2001     Research Assistant (postdoctoral after June 1999), Department of Linguistics, Bielefeld University

•   Diploma in Psychology (Dipl-Psych), Mannheim University (Germany) 1994

•   PhD in Psychology, Mannheim University (Germany) 1999

In Psychology I convene and teach a 2nd year module on "Brain and Behaviour" (PY2242) together with Dr Dan Shaw and Dr Ed Walford (convenor of practical element) and a 3^rd year module on “Basics of Joint Attention” (PY3005). 

I also teach on the Msc "Cognitive Neuroscience" and convene the module "Advanced Methods of Cognitive Neuroscience".

Please get in touch (k.kessler@aston.ac.uk) if you would like to discuss a psychology final year project or an MSc project.

email: k.kessler@aston.ac.uk
telephone: +44 (0) 121 204-3187