Christine R. Harris is a research scientist at the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. Harris received her Ph.D. in psychology from UCSD in 1998.

Her research interests are human emotion and interpersonal relationships. Harris' interest in tickling began as a graduate student when she read Charles Darwin's book "The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animal," particularly the section on tickling and humor. In an effort to find out what else was known about tickle, she discovered that, although ticklish laughter has been pondered since the ancient Greeks, there is almost no empirical work on the topic. The author of several papers a year since 1995, Harris is a pioneer in the field.

Besides tickling, Harris has also studied embarrassment and jealousy.