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In May 2018, Professor Julian Leslie was designated a Fellow of the Association for Behaviour Analysis International (ABAI).  Prior to this year’s appointments, there were only two ABAI Fellows in Europe, and no others in the UK or Ireland.

The letter from ABAI President states:

“The Fellow designation is intended to recognize outstanding contributions of ABAI’s most distinguished members in at least one of the primary areas of research/scholarship, professional practice, and teaching/administration/service. Full members of ABAI are nominated by current Fellows and reviewed by the Fellows Committee, which then makes recommendations to the Executive Council, which, upon further review, grants Fellow status. Your work in and commitment to the field provide clear evidence of significant contributions and show how deserving you are of Fellow status".

Professor Julian C. Leslie received his D.Phil. in Psychology from Oxford University in 1974.

He has spent most of his career at Ulster University, where he is a professor of psychology.

For more than four decades, Professor Leslie has been investigating topics in the experimental analysis of behavior, applied behavior analysis, psychopharmacology, behavioral neuroscience, experimental psychology, and applied psychology.

More recently his work has included strategies to address environmental and ethical issues.

Research & publications

Professor Leslie’s scores of publications are known for their characteristic thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and eye toward how his behavior analytic work relates to broader issues in the discipline and to both general psychology and the larger world.

It is noteworthy that some of Professor Leslie’s research (e.g., his recent work on electricity use reduction) is specifically designed to measure the impact of behavioral procedures in natural settings.

Teaching

Professor Leslie is a distinguished teacher, and he has contributed significantly to the dissemination of both experimental and applied behavior analysis in Ireland and around the world.

He has had a major impact through a series of textbooks, including one of the first on the experimental analysis of behavior, Principles of Behavioral Analysis (with J. R. Millenson in 1979), Essential Behaviour Analysis (2002), and Principles of Behavioral Analysis (2008). His work related to the organization of behavior analysis in Europe also attests to the impact of his scholarship.

Professor Leslie was a founder of the Irish Association for Behaviour Analysis as well as having a long-term involvement with the UK Experimental Analysis of Behaviour Group. That group eventually led to the establishment of the European Association for Behaviour Analysis.