MARY-FRANCES O'CONNOR
Author of The Grieving Brain and The Grieving Body
Dr. O’Connor is a highly sought-after speaker, giving numerous talks and workshops to community organizations around the world, including in-service trainings to healthcare professionals and volunteers at hospices.
Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona Department of Psychology, where she directs the Grief, Loss and Social Stress (GLASS) Lab. She earned a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Arizona in 2004 and following a faculty appointment at UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, she returned to the University of Arizona in 2012. She served for three years as Director of Clinical Training in the Psychology Department. Her research program focuses on the wide-ranging emotional responses to bereavement. In particular, she investigates the neurobiological and psychophysiological aspects that vary between individual grief responses via functional neuroimaging, immune, and endocrine analysis. Dr. O’Connor also researches difficulties adapting following the death of a loved one, termed prolonged grief (newly included in the revised DSM-5). She believes that a clinical science approach toward the experience and physiology of grief can improve psychological treatment. Dr. O’Connor’s book, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss (2022; HarperOne) has garnered praise from peers and literary critics alike and has led to speaking engagements around the world. She wrote a follow-up called The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing (2025).
In addition to her outstanding record of scholarship, Dr. O’Connor is a highly proficient and beloved teacher and mentor, honored with the Undergraduate Biology Research Program (UBRP) “Outstanding Mentor Award” in 2014. In 2020, she organized an international multidisciplinary research group called the Neurobiology of Grief International Network (NOGIN). Under her leadership, the group has held three international conferences supported by the National Institute on Aging. Dr. O’Connor is a highly sought-after speaker, giving numerous talks and workshops to community organizations around the world, including in-service trainings to healthcare professionals and volunteers at hospices. She has authored research papers published in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals, from American Journal of Psychiatry to NeuroImage to Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Dr. O’Connor’s work has been discussed in the New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, and Scientific American.
Speech topics
The Neuroscience of Grief: How We Learn From Love and Loss
Using an integrative view of clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience, Dr. O’Connor explores grieving as a learning process, describing how the brain is critical in understanding that a loved one has died, updating one’s view of the world while carrying the absence of this person. Cognitive neuroscience can help clarify the “why” of grief—why it takes so long, and is so painful. Dr. O’Connor explains that older stage models of grief are no longer used and offers a new paradigm for understanding love, loss, and learning. In addition, she recounts how empirical research has helped to define prolonged grief disorder (previously called complicated grief) and how targeted psychotherapy is an effective treatment for this disabling condition.
The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing
Coping with death and grief is one of the most painful human experiences. While we can speak to the psychological and emotional ramifications of loss and sorrow, we often overlook its impact on our physical bodies. Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor specializes in the study of grief, and in this talk, based on her book, she shares vital scientific research, revealing imperative new insights on its profound physiological impact. O'Connor will combine illuminating studies and personal stories to explore the toll loss takes on our cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems and the larger implications for our long-term well-being.
Books
The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing
The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain focuses on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body.
The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss
A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve, providing a new paradigm for understanding love, loss, and learning.