Michel Ferrari

Biography

Dr. Michel Ferrari received his BA from the Liberal Arts College of Concordia University and his MA and PhD from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He was a Postdoctoral Associate with Robert Sternberg at Yale University and a Research Associate with Michelene Chi and Kurt VanLehn at the Learning research and Development Center (LRDC) of the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Ferrari teaches developmental and educational psychology withing the Masters of Education Program, as well as the history of psychology, with a special focus on the history of the science of consciousness.

Research Interest

Dr. Ferrari is interested in personal identity and how it develops in typical and atypical populations. This interest extends, in particular, to questions of personal wisdom, and to the development of academic and professional expertise. He is also interested in the study of personal conscious experience, both in contemporary cognitive science and in the history of psychology. Dr. Ferrari is head of the Wisdom and Identity Lab, which explores personal wisdom in people of different ages (from children to the elderly) in different countries around the world. He is currently leading an international study of personal wisdom in Canada, the USA, Serbia, Ukraine, India, and China. His most recent pilot projects extend this study to the importance of wisdom to the successful acculturation of immigrants and refugees to Canada. In applied practice, Dr. Ferrari and his students are currently studying the experience of personal identity in clinical populations, specifically, individuals diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome or High Functioning Autism. With Aftab Khan, he has just completed a study of how young adults with Asperer's Syndrome in Pakistan and Canada understand their own wisdom and identity.