Studying how the mind encodes, distorts, and rebuilds memory at the intersection of neuroscience and philosophy.
Scroll to explore ↓Dr. Eleanor Marsh
Professor, Cognitive Science
Eleanor Marsh is a professor of Cognitive Science at Stanford University, where she has taught and researched for over fifteen years. Her work sits at the border between cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind.
Before joining Stanford, she held positions at MIT's Brain and Cognitive Sciences department and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. She holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley (2006) and a B.A. from Yale University (2001).
Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation. She serves on the editorial boards of Psychological Review and Cognition.
Three interrelated threads form the core of my laboratory's work.
How retrieved memories become temporarily labile and can be updated or distorted before being re-stored. We use behavioral paradigms combined with fMRI and EEG to track neural correlates of reconsolidation windows in humans.
Investigating how top-down predictions shape low-level perception. This line of work tests the boundaries of the predictive processing framework with adversarial stimuli and cross-cultural perceptual studies.
A philosophical psychology inquiry into how autobiographical narrative underpins personal identity over time. Collaborates with clinical populations experiencing memory disorders to examine what is preserved when facts are lost.
Selected recent publications. Full list on Google Scholar ↗
Courses currently offered at Stanford University.
An undergraduate survey of perception, attention, memory, language, and decision-making. Covers foundational theories alongside contemporary debates in the field. Enrollment: 120.
Autumn · WinterAn upper-division course examining the fragility and malleability of human memory, with special attention to eyewitness testimony, false memories, and the admissibility of memory evidence. Enrollment: 30.
SpringA graduate-level reading seminar on the predictive processing and active inference frameworks. Weekly discussion of primary literature, culminating in an original term paper. Enrollment: 12.
Winter · GraduateRequired first-year seminar for Cognitive Science Ph.D. students. Covers research methods, writing for publication, and the professional dimensions of an academic career. Enrollment: 8.
Autumn · GraduateI currently supervise four doctoral students and am accepting one new Ph.D. student for the 2025–26 cohort. Prospective students with interests in memory, predictive cognition, or the philosophy of personal identity are encouraged to reach out before applying. Please include a brief statement of your research interests and any relevant writing samples.
Get in touch ↓I welcome inquiries from prospective students, collaborators, journalists, and the general public. I try to respond to all messages within one week during term.