Course Leader

Kristin Neff & Chris Germer

Kristin Neff got her Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1997. Her current position is in the Human Development and Culture Program, Dept. of Educational Psychology, at the University of Texas at Austin. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion –a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. The scale she created to measure self-compassion was published in 2003 and is now being used by hundreds of researchers worldwide. Kristin has a new book titled Self-Compassion that will be published by Hodder in the UK in July, 2011.

 

Christopher K. Germer, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice, specializing in mindfulness, acceptance, and compassion-based treatment. He has been integrating the principles and practices of meditation into psychotherapy since 1978. Dr. Germer is a Clinical Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School and a founding member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy.  He lectures internationally on mindfulness and self-compassion, is a co-editor of the professionally acclaimed book Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, and co-editor of the forthcoming Compassion and Wisdom in Psychotherapy.

Back