Disa Sauter

My work examines emotion with a particular focus on the communication of emotions via non-verbal expressions. I study vocalisations like laughter, cries and sighs, and also facial expressions of emotions. I am interested in how factors such as preparedness, culture, and learning shape our emotions and the ways that they are communicated. My research makes use of a wide range of empirical approaches, including cross-cultural comparisons and computational methods. I have a particular interest in positive emotions, and in recent years, I have become increasingly interested in understanding emotions in relation to sustainability and pro-environmental behaviour. 

From 1 December 2025, I'm associate professor of social psychology at the Department of Psychology and tutorial fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford.

I did my BSc in Psychology and Cognitive Science at University College London (2002), followed by a PhD in the same department (2007). Then I worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, after which I received an ESRC fellowship, which I took up at Birkbeck College London. In 2008 I moved to the Netherlands to work as a staff researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, where I stayed until 2011. I then moved to the University of Amsterdam, where I held a Veni grant (2011-2016) from the Dutch Science Foundation, followed by an ERC Starting Grant and several grants from the Dutch Science Foundation (2017-2024). In 2023, I was awarded a Vici grant from the Dutch Science Foundation. In addition to my roles at the University of Oxford, I am also Associate Professor in the Department of Social Psychology at UvA, associate editor of the journal Emotion Review, president of the International Society for Research on Emotion (ISRE), and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).