Margaret Bull Kovera is received her B.A. in psychology with departmental honors from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Minnesota.  She has served on the faculties of Reed College, Florida International University (FIU), and John Jay College, City University of New York.

She has received a number of awards for her teaching and research, including first place in the Dissertation Award competition sponsored by the American Psychology-Law Society (APLS) and the Saleem Shah Award for Early Career Achievement in Psychology and Law from APLS and the American Academy of Forensic Psychology.  In addition to winning university-wide teaching awards from FIU and John Jay, she received the Outstanding Teacher and Mentor in Psychology and Law Award from APLS.

Dr. Kovera is a Past-President of APLS and has served as the Treasurer of APLS and the Secretary/Treasurer of SPSSI.  She is also the current Editor-in-Chief of Law and Human Behavior, the first woman to ever hold this position. Her research has been published in Law and Human Behavior, Journal of Applied Psychology, Applied Cognitive Psychology, and Psychology, Public Policy, and Law.  The National Science Foundation has continuously funded her research on eyewitness identification and legal decision making (over $1.7 million) since 1997.

Dr. Kovera is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychology-Law Society (APLS), the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI).

In addition to her academic work, Dr. Kovera regularly serves as a jury consultant and as an expert witness on the reliability of eyewitness identification.