Gísli Guðjónsson
Icelandic psychologist
Gísli Hannes Guðjónsson, CBE (born 26 October 1947) is an Icelandic-British academic, educator, forensic psychologist and former detective. He is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Psychiatry of King's College London and a Professor in the Psychology Department at Reykjavik University. Gísli is specialized in suggestibility, false confessions and false memory syndrome.
Biography
Gísli was born on 26 October 1947 to Guðjón Aðalsteinn Guðmundsson and Þóra Hannesdóttir. His twin brother joined the Reykjavík Criminal Investigation Police while he chose to study economics at Brunel University London (BSc, 1975), but changed to psychology whilst in his second year. He completed his studies at the University of Surrey (MSc, 1977; PhD, 1981). In 1982, together with MacKeith he coined the term memory distrust syndrome, to describe those who distrust their own memories and are motivated to rely on external (non-self) sources to verify the accuracy of memories.
In the 1990s he worked as head of forensic psychology services and clinical psychologist to the Bethlem Royal Hospital and Maudsley Hospital.
He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to clinical psychology.
Work
Gísli's expert testimony was the basis for the convictions of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four being overturned.
“Gísli Guðjónsson” enters the record as icelandic psychologist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gísli, Guðjónsson and Icelandic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3481807. VIAF identifies the subject as 34533255. The Library of Congress control number is n87861927. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1975, 1977 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gísli Guðjónsson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.