Francis Shen
Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience
2018 – 2020
Francis X. Shen is an Associate Professor of Law and a McKnight Land-Grant Professor at the University of Minnesota, where he directs the Shen Neurolaw Lab. He also serves as Executive Director of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Executive Director of Education and Outreach activities for the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. In addition, he serves on the Board of Scientific Advisors for the National Courts and Science Institute. Before joining the faculty at the University of Minnesota he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Tulane University Law School and The Murphy Institute; a Visiting Scholar at Vanderbilt University Law School; Associate Director of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project; and a Lecturer at Harvard University.
Since Fall 2017, Francis has served as the third Senior Fellow in Law and Neuroscience at the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center. He was previously a Visiting Scholar at the Center in spring 2015.
Francis conducts empirical and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of law and the brain sciences. He is co-author of the first law coursebook on law and neuroscience (Aspen Publishers, 2014), and has explored the implications of cognitive neuroscience for criminal law, tort, and legislation in the United States. Additional research areas of focus are criminal law and crime policy, and education law and policy. His research has been published in a variety of outlets in law, political science, psychology, and education, and he has made more than 50 professional presentations. He has co-authored two books, The Education Mayor (Georgetown, 2007) and The Casualty Gap (Oxford, 2010), and has authored or co-authored many articles and book chapters.
Francis completed his BA in economics and English at the University of Chicago in 2000, his JD at Harvard Law School in 2006, and his PhD in government and social policy at Harvard University and the Kennedy School of Government in 2008. During graduate school he was a doctoral fellow in the Harvard University Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality & Social Policy, supported by the National Science Foundation. From 2007-09, he was a teaching fellow, lecturer, and assistant director of undergraduate studies in the Harvard Department of Government and received five Certificates of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching from Harvard’s Derek Bok Center.
In 2009 he joined the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project, at the University of California Santa Barbara, as a post-doctoral research fellow. In 2010-11 he became associate director of the Project and a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt Law School. In 2011-12 he was a visiting assistant professor at Tulane University Law School and The Murphy Institute.