Merlin Donald

Photograph of Merlin Donald Merlin Donald was born and raised in Montreal. After completing a BA at Loyola College (now Concordia University) in Montreal, he went on to obtain a PhD in Neuropsychology from McGill University, where he also carried out Graduate Studies in Philosophy. He spent two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the West Haven Veterans Administration Medical Center, followed by three years as a Research Neuropsychologist, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology, Yale University School of Medicine.

Merlin came to Queen’s in 1972, and progressed through the ranks to become a Professor in the Department of Psychology, with adjunct appointments in the Faculty of Education and Department of Psychiatry. He became Head of the Department of Psychology in 2002, and retired from Queen’s in 2005, to become Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

He is the author of many scientific papers, and two influential books: Origins of the Modern Mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition (Harvard, 1991), and A Mind So Rare: The evolution of human consciousness (Norton, 2001). His work has been translated into seven languages. He has been a visiting professor or scholar at University College London, Harvard, Stanford, UCSD, and elsewhere, as well as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, at Stanford, and a Killam Research Fellow. He was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association in 1984, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1995. His work has been widely debated in various academic disciplines, including linguistics, archaeology, biology, cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience, and in many high-profile general periodicals such as Science, Nature, and The Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Merlin has a strong interest in the cognitive study of the arts, and the cultural impact of new media, and his academic work continues to be focused on human cognitive evolution, and especially on the complex interactions between mind, technology and culture. He is also a published poet. He and his wife Thais have two sons, Peter and Julian.