Stuart joined NUS as an Associate Professor in July 2013 from the University of Birmingham, UK. He completed his PhD at University College London in 1995 and was one of the first investigators to use functional imaging combined with investigations of pain. After his PhD he was a research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh and then an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Stuart’s main aim is to understand pain without touch and he has used hypnosis, visual illusions and priming to generate pain without touch in both normal volunteers and patients with chronic pain. This work has been featured on the front cover of the journals Pain and Cortex. In 2012 he was the recipient of the APS Paul D. MacLean Award for Outstanding Neuroscience Research in Psychosomatic Medicine.

Stuart’s work extends beyond pain, however, to deeper questions of what it means to be human and how experience develops. Consequently he has written extensively on a wide range of topics including fetal pain, mobile phones, shopping, evolutionary psychology and the brain. His work has been quoted extensively in the international print media and he has appeared several times on radio and television. He is also regularly consulted for his expertise and has provided evidence for the UK Department of Health and the Commons Science and Technology Committee and has spoken before the Virginia Senate in the US and consulted for the New York Civil Liberties Association.