David C. Rubin is the Juanita M. Kreps Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, where he has taught and completed research since 1978. He has also been a visiting professor and received an honorary doctorate from Aarhaus University in Denmark. He obtained his BS in physics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon and his MA and PhD in Psychology at Harvard University.
Professor Rubin’s main research interest has been in long-term memory, especially for complex (or “real-world”) stimuli, as opposed to controlled lab studies. This work includes the study of autobiographical memory and oral traditions, as well as prose. Memory for real life situations had initially been an overlooked topic in cognitive psychology, and Professor Rubin played a major role in developing autobiographical memory to the serious and respected field of research it is today. He has also studied memory as it is more commonly done in experimental psychology laboratories using lists. In addition to this purely behavioral research, which he plans to continue, he works on memory in clinical populations with the aid of a National Institute of Mental Health grant to study PTSD and on the underlying neural basis of memory the aid of a National Institute of Aging grant to study autobiographical memory using fMRI.
Professor Rubin has more than 140 journal articles, six books and 36 book chapters published in the field. You can find his wide array of publications, searching by their subject or year of publication atop this page, as well as his CV and photos from his lab at Duke University.
