Dr Thomas H Bak

Dr. Bak is Reader in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, clinical research fellow in the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences and Co-Director of Bilingualism Matters. He is also the strand leader of Strand 6 (“Multilingualism, cognition, health and wellbeing”) of the AHRC Project “Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies” (MEITS).

Born and raised in Poland, Dr Bak was trained in medicine and worked clinically in neurology, neurosurgery, psychiatry and psychotherapy in Germany, Switzerland and UK. Dr Bak’s main scientific interests are the relationship between brain and language and different presentations of dementia across the world. Since 2010, he is the president of the World Federation of Neurology, Research Group on Aphasia, Dementia and Cognitive Disorders (WFN RG ADCD). He has been teaching and conducting research across Europe and in Asia, South America and Africa.

Over the last few years, his work focused increasingly on cognitive effects of bilingualism and language learning across the lifespan, in healthy ageing as well as in stroke and dementia. He has spoken about this topic in press, radio and TV interviews, at Edinburgh Science Festival, Edinburgh Fringe (Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas) and other public events, giving talks in seven languages. Dr. Bak enjoys particularly travelling and hillwalking; his worst addiction is learning new languages.