Leor Zmigrod

Dr Leor Zmigrod is a political psychologist and neuroscientist, and author of The Ideological Brain. Her research centres on what makes some individuals most susceptible to extreme and dogmatic ideologies.

She studied at Cambridge University as a Gates Scholar before winning a Junior Research Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge. She has held visiting fellowships at Stanford, Harvard, and both the Berlin and Paris Institutes for Advanced Study. She was listed on ‘Forbes 30 Under 30’ in Science and has won numerous prizes, including the Women of the Future Science Award and the Glushko Prize.

Dr Zmigrod’s popular science book The Ideological Brain reveals the psychological and neurobiological traits that predispose some minds to extremism as well as the ways in which immersion in rigid ideologies might transform our brains and bodies. The book is being translated into over 15 languages and has been recognised as one of the most hotly anticipated non-fiction books of 2025 by The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, New Scientist, and Financial Times.