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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.

Beth Barker
Beth is a Research Associate at PEDAL. She's interested in supporting babies, toddlers, and families in the first years of life, translating research to real-world impacts, and promoting children's own voices in research.

Stephen Bayley
Stephen is a Research Associate with PEDAL and an Associate Member of the REAL Centre, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on education for adaptability and how children in low-income settings develop skills like creativity and problem solving.

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

Chloe Bond
Chloe supports the work of the PEDAL Centre in her role as Communications Assistant.

Brittney Chere
Brittney is a Research Associate currently working on the Healthy Start, Happy Start follow-up study and the PlayBack study within PEDAL.

Christine O'Farrelly
Christine is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Senior Research Associate at PEDAL. She's developing ways to widen access to early, effective support for families to help babies and toddlers enjoy healthy and happy lives.

Jenny Gibson
Jenny is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Education. Her research focuses on investigating the role of play in children’s social development, and examining how play can be measured.

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.

Zaheema Iqbal
Zaheema is a Research Assistant working on the Healthy Start, Happy Start follow up study within PEDAL.

Muhammad Aliff Aiman Kamarudin
Aiman is a Research Assistant, currently exploring the ways play and booksharing can support families in children's earliest years.

Katie Lui
Katie is a Research Assistant working on the Healthy Start, Happy Start follow up study within PEDAL.

Laura Oxley
Laura is a Research Associate working on the Healthy Start, Happy Start follow-up study within PEDAL.

Sophie Phillips
Sophie is a Research Associate at PEDAL. Sophie has a passion for improving the health and development of children and reducing health inequalities from the earliest years, primarily through movement behaviour (encompassing physical activity, play, sedentary behaviour, and sleep).

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

Eloise Stevens
Eloise is a Research Associate and Child Therapist, currently developing and testing a virtual book sharing programme for parents of young children to promote language development and support parent-child relationships.

Pablo Torres Núñez
Pablo is a British Academic Postdoctoral Fellow and Principal Investigator on a project examining the impact of culturally effective teaching on developing self-regulation.

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

Sabilah Eboo Alwani
Sabilah is a 3rd year PhD student at PEDAL, researching how parents have supported children's early learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sydney Conroy
Sydney is a PhD student researching play therapists' experiences and perceptions of children's wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chika Ezeugwu
Chika is a PhD student researching how the integration of neuroscience, cognition, child development and education can improve the experience of children in low-income contexts.

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.

Kelsey Graber
Kelsey is a 4th year PhD student researching the role of play in healthcare, specifically for children with chronic or severe illness.

Morgan Healy
Morgan is a 2nd year PhD student and Gates Scholar. Her research is exploring how family home visiting programmes can support children's development.

Natalie Kirby
Tilly is a 2nd year PhD student researching the ways play and booksharing can support families in children's earliest years. She's also a Research Assistant for the Centre.

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

Stephanie Nowack
Stephanie is a 3rd year PhD student researching autistic children’s experiences of playful interventions in South Africa.

Domnick Okullo
Domnick is a 3rd year PhD student researching the use of play-based pedagogies in early childhood education.

Paulina Pérez-Duarte Mendiola
Paulina is a 2nd year PhD student exploring how children behave before, during and after they interact with Hospital Play Specialists and what children think of these interactions.

Emma Pritchard
Emma is a 3rd year PhD student funded by the LEGO Foundation and Cambridge Trust, undertaking research relating to autistic play and strengths-based autism diagnostic assessment.

Yanwen Wu
Yanwen is a 2nd year PhD student, investigating the relationship between pretend play and counterfactual reasoning from a temporal perspective.
PEDAL Alumni
Find out more about previous PEDAL members and what they are up to now.

Emily Goodacre
Emily has recently completed her PhD, exploring how children communicate with their peers during play and how this communication may be related to their characteristics.

Krishna Kulkarni
Krishna has recently completed her PhD, researching parent-child playfulness and its importance in child outcomes.

Vicky Yiran Zhao
Vicky has recently completed her PhD, looking at the relationship between communication disorders and psychosocial adversities, and how play can be an effective intervention to promote children’s social and emotional skills.
Quick links
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PEDAL’s Goals
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