Stuart Shanker is a Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at York University and Director of MEHRIS, Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative and Study.

He was educated at Oxford, where he obtained a First in PPE and won the Marian Buck Fellowship at Christ Church, where he obtained a First in a B Phil in Philosophy and a D Phil with Distinction in Philosophy.

Among his awards are:
A Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship and Postdoctoral Fellowship;
A Calgary Institute for the Humanities Fellowship;
A University of Alberta Mactaggart Fellowship;
An Iszaak Walton Killam Fellowship; and
the Walter L. Gordon Fellowship at York University.

He has received many grants, among them a $5,000,000 grant from the Harris Steel Foundation to establish the Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative (MEHRI), a state-of-the-art cognitive and social neuroscience centre at York University.

Among his recent monographs are Apes, language and the human mind (with Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Talbot Taylor, 1998); Wittgenstein’s remarks on the foundations of AI (1998); Toward a Psychology of Global Interdependency (with Stanley Greenspan, 2002), The First Idea (with Stanley Greenspan, 2004), Early Years Study II (with J. Fraser Mustard and Margaret McCain, 2006) and El rizoma de la racionalidad (with Pedro Reygadas, 2007).

He is the editor of several collections, among them The Routledge History of Philosophy (with G.H.R. Parkinson, 1994-2000); Language, Culture, Self (with David Bakhurst, 2001), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical Assessments (with David Kilfoyle, 2002), Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (a member of the PDM Steering Committee, 2006), and Human Development in the 21st Century (with Alan Fogel and Barbara King, 2008).

In addition to serving as Director of MEHRI, Dr. Shanker is Past President of the Council of Early Child Development and Director of the Cuba-Mexico-Canada Research Initiative, an international, multi-disciplinary investigation into preventative mental health (funded by IDRC of Canada).