Professor Susan Harrow, Ashley Watkins Chair in French Language and Literature, Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology and Richard Pettigrew, Professor of Philosophy, are among 92 outstanding academics selected in this year’s cohort.
Professor Susan Harrow’s expertise spans French narrative and poetry of the broad modern era, with a particular focus on visual and textual cultures, modernism, and literary naturalism. Her research has been supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Leverhulme Trust. Professor Harrow was Joint Winner of the R. Gapper Book Prize for her 2020 monograph on colour in modern French poetry and art writing. She held a Distinguished Research Fellowship at the Université de Grenoble-Alpes in 2025.
Professor Harrow is a former President of the Society for French Studies, and in 2025, the Modern Humanities Research Association appointed her as the first female General Editor of the Legenda imprint. She is Deputy Chair of the Sub-Panel for Modern Languages and Linguistics in REF 2029. She holds the rank of Officier in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques for services to French culture and education.
Professor Harrow said: “I’m delighted, and deeply honoured, to have been elected a Fellow of the British Academy. The Academy is an exceptional champion of the humanities and the social sciences. Its dynamic and distinguished work is more urgent today than ever in helping advance critical inquiry, share inter-cultural knowledge and understanding, and shape the future. I’m looking forward to contributing to the work of the British Academy.”
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is an expert on social media, misinformation, and the spread of ‘fake news’ in society, including conspiracy theories, and how social media algorithms may contribute to the prevalence of misinformation online. He is also interested in factors that influence whether people accept scientific evidence, for example surrounding vaccinations or climate science.
Professor Lewandowsky has published more than 300 scholarly articles, chapters, and books, with over 150 peer-reviewed articles during the last 10 years. He frequently appears in print and broadcast media and has been working with European policy makers for many years.
"I am deeply honoured to have been elected Fellow of the British Academy,” Professor Lewandowsky said. “This award means a great deal to me - not only as personal recognition, but also as validation of years of collaborations with many brilliant colleagues on the challenges facing democracy in the digital age. I am thrilled and humbled to become a Fellow of the British Academy.”
Professor Richard Pettigrew’s research spans a range of philosophical subjects including the theory of rational belief, decision theory, logic, philosophy of mathematics, and ethics.
During his PhD, Professor Pettigrew explored the relationship between traditional mathematics and infinities. In his postdoctoral work, he defended the view that mathematics is the study of what is common between different structures of the same type. He then turned his attention to epistemology and how people should make choices, where he helped to develop a way of justifying the norms of reasoning under uncertainty by appealing to the accuracy of our beliefs. More recently, he has started to work at the intersection of ethics and epistemology.
Professor Pettigrew said: “At the beginning of my career, the British Academy took a chance on an ambitious and unusual project I proposed by funding a Postdoctoral Fellowship to pursue it, so it is wonderful to return to the institution now and join as a Fellow so many of the philosophers whose work I have learned from and built upon in my own research.”
In 2026, a total of 58 UK Fellows, 32 International Fellows and 2 Honorary Fellows were nominated for election to the British Academy Fellowship. The Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.
Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of more than 1,800 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas. Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian and China expert Professor Rana Mitter and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill.