Andrea Samson is a full professor in psychology at UniDistance Suisse, Brig, Switzerland. Andrea Samson has studied and conducted research at various universities in Switzerland and abroad. She completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Fribourg and her postdoctoral training at Stanford University (2010-2015). Between 2015 and 2018, she was awarded the Ambizione fellowship by the SNSF to conduct her research at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (CISA) at the University of Geneva. From 2018 to 2023, she had a professorship funded by the Swiss National Research Foundation (SNSF) at the Institute of Special Education, University of Fribourg. In parallel, she was hired as an assistant professor (2018-2020) at UniDistance Suisse and was tenured in 2020.
She is the director of the chEERS Lab - a team of researchers interested in the study of socio-emotional processes in people with neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g., autism) and intellectual disabilities (e.g., Williams syndrome), as well as in typical development. Humor, positive emotions, and the regulation of emotions related to mental health play an important role in her research. The team is also interested in using board games and new technologies, such as virtual reality, to assess emotional skills and develop remediation programs.
Faculty of Psychology