Dag Aarsland MD, PhD

Professor Dag Aarsland joined the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience in January 2016, from Karolinska Institutet where he has been a professor of clinical dementia research since 2011.

Dag is renowned throughout the world in the field of Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson’s disease but has made contributions across the spectrum of old age psychiatry.

As well as heading the department, Prof Aarsland will contribute to new initiatives including dementia research in our forthcoming bid to renew the Biomedical Research Centre. He will also carry out some clinical work within South London & Maudsley NHS Trust and will help in training the next cohort of old-age psychiatrists. If he has any time left over, perhaps he will help us to learn how to chop wood and solve complex crime mysteries.

Dag Aarsland gained his degree in medicine in 1988 from the University of Oslo. At the same time as he was working as a clinician at Stavanger University Hospital, he started to conduct research, gaining his Ph.D. in 1996 with a thesis on language disorders among patients with Alzheimer's disease. In 1998 he became a specialist in psychiatry.

From 2000 to 2002 he was a senior lecturer in geriatric psychiatry at the University of Bergen. He then became an adjunct professor, then a professor of geriatric medicine at Bergen from 2006-2009. Between 2007 and 2009 he was a visiting professor at King's College in London, where he has held an honorary professorship since 2009. In 2009 Dag Aarsland became a professor of geriatric psychiatry at the University of Oslo. He is also a director of research at the University of Stavanger's Centre for Age-Related Medicine.

Dag Aarsland was, for several years, director of the Norwegian Neuropsychiatric Association. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes, most recently in 2011 when he was awarded the Western Norway Regional Health Authority's Research Prize.