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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.
Sally Hogg
Sally is PEDAL’s Senior Policy Fellow. She works with the team to find ways for our knowledge and research to inform public policy, in order to improve children’s lives.
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.
Anna Vidos
Anna supports the work of PEDAL in her role as Projects Assistant.
Sophie Wilcock
Sophie supports the work of PEDAL in her role as the centre's Administrator.
PEDAL Students
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.
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.
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 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.
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