Gina Rippon Keynote Speaker

Gina Rippon is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroimaging at the Institute for Health and Neurodevelopment, Aston University, Birmingham UK and a international expert on brain-imaging techniques.  Her research career has involved state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques to investigate individual differences in the brain, especially in developmental disorders such as autism. She also explores the use of neuroscience techniques to investigate social processes, such as those associated with sex/gender differences in the human brain.

She is a speaker on gender, neuroscience, diversity and inclusion, and an outspoken critic of ‘neurotrash’, the misuse of neuroscience that props up outdated gender stereotypes.

She is on a mission to debunk ‘the Brain Problem’ myth that there is an intrinsic difference between male and female brains. Neuroscience research is frequently misused to ‘explain’ gender inequalities and perpetuate outdated stereotypes in terms of pre-programmed biology ignoring the equally brain-changing effects of social factors.

Gina authored ‘The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain’ (2019) (published in the US as ‘Gender and Our Brains’), which was translated into six languages, and described by the Observer as “highly accessible… revolutionary to a glorious degree”. In the book she unpacks gender stereotypes and the impact they have on our brains.

She is an active member of several research groups dedicated to furthering gender equality, including an EU initiative on gender equality in research and innovation (GERI), the British Science Association’s All Party Parliamentary Group Inquiry into Equity in STEM, and she served on the Fawcett Society’s Commission investigating gender stereotypes in the early years.  Gina is the Past President of the British Association for Cognitive Neuroscience and in 2015, and an Honorary Fellow of the British Science Association for services to the communication of science.

Gina’s expertise and insights are highly sought after. She has written for popular science outlets including New Scientist, Scientific American and The Conversation, among others. She has appeared on programmes including BBC’s Horizon, Start the Week, Woman’s Hour and The Infinite Monkey Cage, and took part in a two-part BBC documentary on gender stereotyping in primary schools, which is now widely used in teacher training material.

As a speaker, she has presented at Sydney Opera House, the UK Hay Festival, and delivered keynote addresses to the UK’s Cabinet Office, the Department for Education, the Government’s Gender Equality Unit and the EU Commission.

Gina’s latest book – published in the UK as The Lost Girls of Autism: How Science Failed Autistic Women – and the New Research that’s Changing the Story and in the US as Off the Spectrum: Why the Science of Autism Has Failed Women and Girls – was published in April 2025. She presented on this topic to The Holtzbrinck Group Global Speaker Series in August 2024, and the Springer Nature group published an interview with her about this work in November 2024 (https://communities.springernature.com/posts/q-a-with-gina-rippon-on-autism-in-women). She went on to deliver a keynote address at the 10th World Congress of Women’s Mental Health in Bangalore, India, in March 2025.