Professor Barbara Summers

Professor Barbara Summers

Profile

Qualifications PhD, University of Bradford
MBA, University of Bradford
BSc (Hons.) Genetics, University of Leeds
MBCS, MICM, DipM

Current Positions

Professor of Human Judgment and Decision Making

Director, Centre for Decision Research
To visit the Centre for Decision Research (CDR) web site click here

Experience

Barbara Summers is Professor of Human Judgment and Decision Making at Leeds University Business School, where she also serves as a Director of the Centre for Decision Research. Her research focuses on individual decision making from both cognitive and emotional perspectives, using psychological and analytics methods, with applications in a variety of domains including finance, health, and public perceptions and response to severe weather. She collaborates with experts and organizations in these fields in the UK and abroad. Her work benefits from her previous commercial experience as Head of Systems Development at Equifax Europe UK, and she is an invited member of the Institute for Credit Management (the UK professional body for credit management).

Barbara’s work is regularly published in peer-reviewed journals, and her work on financial decision making informed the UK Department for Work and Pensions and NEST (the pension provider set up to meet the requirements of the Pensions Act 2008, which introduced auto-enrolment in pensions from 2012 onwards). Her Knowledge Transfer project with Clydesdale Bank won an award from the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Recent projects include work on analysing risk perception and preparedness to facilitate development of effective disaster risk communication strategies (supported by Lloyd’s Register Foundation), identifying musical talent with AI (KTP project), financial decision making (including in relation to consumer debt and gambling), and moral reasoning and motivations in the tax context.

Barbara is a former President of the European Association for Decision Making  (EADM).

Details of Barbara’s grants and awards can be found in her CV

Teaching Related Experience

Decision Making (UG, MSc & MBA)
Research Methods (UG, MSc & MBA)
Quantitative Methods (UG, MBA, Doctoral)

Dissertation Supervision

Programme Director MSc Management 2002-2006, setting up and launching the programme.
Programme Director BSc Business Analytics 2016-2019.

 

Responsibilities

  • Director, Centre for Decision Research

Research groups and institutes

  • Centre for Decision Research

Current postgraduate researchers