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Meet Our Team

PEDAL's team members come from a range of backgrounds including psychology, education, medicine, and speech and language therapy. We're linked together by our drive to discover how we can use play to spark change in families, schools, and communities.

PEDAL Staff

Sara Baker

Sara is a Professor of Developmental Psychology and Education.

Jenny Gibson

Jenny is Professor of Neurodiversity and Developmental Psychology at the Faculty of Education, and co-director of PEDAL.

Paul Ramchandani

Paul is LEGO Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning, and the Director of the PEDAL Centre.

Stephen Bayley

Stephen is a Senior Research Associate with PEDAL and an Associate Member of the REAL Centre, University of Cambridge.

Julia Birchenough

Julia is a Research Associate, currently working with Prof Sara Baker as part of the Play in Schools team.

Nicole Louise Creasey

Nicole is a research associate who completed her PhD in Child Development at the University of Amsterdam.

Brian Croxford

Brian is a Research Assistant at PEDAL with a background in developmental psychology.

Joy Davis

Joy supports the work of PEDAL in her role as Communications Coordinator.

Kelsey Graber

Kelsey is a Postdoctoral Research Associate whose work focuses on the role of play in children's health and wellbeing.

Soizic Le Courtois

Soizic Le Courtois is a Research Associate on the Early Years Library project.

Christine O'Farrelly

Christine is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Research Associate at PEDAL.

Manogya Sahay

Manogya is a Research Assistant at PEDAL, currently working on the Playtime with Books project.

Eloise Stevens

Eloise is a Research Associate and Child Therapist and works with Prof Paul Ramchandani and Dr Christine O'Farrelly on the Play in Early Life team.

Sophie Wilcock

Sophie supports the work of PEDAL in her role as the centre's Administrator.

PEDAL Students

Abbas AlAbbas

Abbas is a first-year PhD student with PEDAL.

María Alejandra Álvarez Taborda

Alejandra is a first-year PhD student at PEDAL, supervised by Professor Jenny Gibson and funded by The Cambridge Trust.

Dina Fajardo-Tovar

Dina is a 3rd year PhD student exploring Mexican teachers' perspectives on using playful learning in their practice, particularly in urban and rural preschools.

Natalie Kirby

Tilly is a final year PhD student researching the ways play and booksharing can support families in children's earliest years.

Debbie Kwan

Debbie is a PhD student exploring ways to promote and measure empathy.

Zijia Li

Zijia is a first-year PhD student at PEDAL exploring children’s pretend play and their social cognitive development.

Stuart Macalpine

Stuart is a part-time doctoral student, researching the conceptualisation of learning goals in policy.

Carolyn Mazzei

Carolyn is a PhD student examining play and classroom talk, and how these are related to children's cognitive development.

Paulina Pérez-Duarte Mendiola

Paulina is a final year PhD student exploring how children behave before, during and after they interact with Hospital Play Specialists and what children think of these interactions.

Kateryna Tyzhuk

Kate is a second year PhD student in PEDAL and the MRC Epidemiology Unit, investigating young children's risky play within early childhood educational settings in the UK.

Alejandra Vijil Morin

Alejandra is a PhD student researching play in contexts of emergencies.

Yanwen Wu

Yanwen is a 2nd year PhD student, investigating the relationship between pretend play and counterfactual reasoning from a temporal perspective.

Zhiyu Zhao

Zhiyu is a first year PhD student with PEDAL.

PEDAL Associates & Affiliates

Dave Neale

Dave is an affiliate of PEDAL and teaches the psychology of play.

Laura Oxley

Laura is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with PEDAL.

PEDAL PhD Alumni

Sydney Conroy

Sydney's doctoral research examined play therapists' experiences and perceptions of children's wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic, collective trauma, and child-centred play therapy.

Sabilah Eboo Alwani

Sabilah's multi-method research focused on parent support for early learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chika Ezeugwu

Chika's scientific interests focused on integrating neuroscience, cognition, child development, and education to improve educational practice and the experience of children from a low-income context.

Emily Goodacre

Emily's research used data from the ChiRPP study to examine children's communication with their peers during play.

Morgan Healy

Morgan explored how play-based parent interventions and home visiting programs could promote a range of child outcomes including executive function and self-regulation.

Krishna Kulkarni

Krishna's research examined parent-child playfulness, and its importance in child outcomes.

Stephanie Nowack

Stephanie's PhD project looked at a participatory research approach to understanding autistic children’s experience of playful interventions in South Africa.

Domnick Okullo

Domnick's doctoral research focused on teachers’ and parents’ perceptions of the use of play-based learning in Kenya.

Emma Pritchard-Rowe

Emma's PhD focused on understanding autistic play and autism diagnostic assessment from a strengths-based or neurodiversity-informed perspective.

Vicky Yiran Zhao

Vicky's doctoral research project looks at the relationship between communication disorders and psychosocial adversities.