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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

Professor of Developmental Psychology and Education

Jenny Gibson

Professor of Neurodiversity and Developmental Psychology at the Faculty of Education, and PEDAL Co-Director

Paul Ramchandani

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

Christine O'Farrelly

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow & Research Professor at PEDAL, supporting children, families & communities in the earliest years of childhood

Julia Birchenough

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

Jasmine Bonney

Research Assistant supporting the work of the Play in Early Life research team

Nicole Louise Creasey

Assistant Research Professor working on identifying common elements of parenting interventions as part of the Golden Threads project

Tom King

Research Associate focusing on identifying the common elements of attachment- and psychodynamic-based parenting intervention for 0-5 year-olds

Soizic Le Courtois

Research Associate with the Early Years Library project

Laura Oxley

Senior Teaching Associate, Faculty of Education, affiliated with PEDAL

Eloise Stevens

Research Associate and Child Therapist

Eleanor Toye Scott

Research Associate working on the E-TAP project, the Evidence-Traceable AI Pipeline

PEDAL Students

Abbas AlAbbas

Third-year PhD student. His research explores how child engagement can be facilitated in the context of divorce and separation

María Alejandra Álvarez Taborda

Third-year PhD student. Her research explores play through a neurodiversity-affirming lens, with a focus on Latin America

Oktober Evennett

Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and second-year PhD student exploring how we understand the lived experiences of trauma in autistic children and young people

Sarah Foster

First-year PhD exploring how everyday teaching practices support the speech, language and communication development of autistic children across early educational transitions

Belinda Henderson

Final-year PhD student and is supervised by Professor Jenny Gibson as part of the PacLab research group

Debbie Kwan

Final-year PhD student exploring ways to promote and measure empathy

Zijia Li

Third-year PhD student. Her doctoral research focuses on how pretend play can afford children’s counterfactual reasoning abilities

Sammi Liang

Second-year PhD student researching language delays and differences in early childhood

Stuart Macalpine

Part-time doctoral student, researching the conceptualisation of learning goals in policy

Carolyn Mazzei

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

Hannah Miller

Second-year PhD student researching the cultivation of “herd” resilience in children through play

Tom Rance

Paediatrician and PhD student researching the impact of play on children's health

Rebecca Reid

Third-year PhD student researching play and adolescence in the context of school exclusions

Rebecca Sands

Third-year PhD student interested in children's development of critical thinking skills through the English primary curriculum

Katharine Selby

Second-year PhD student researching how children’s right to play can be supported in displacement camps

Sonja Tervola

Second-year PhD researcher exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), social robotics, and neurodivergent-inclusive education

Kateryna Tyzhuk

PhD student investigating young children's risky play within early childhood educational settings in the UK

Alejandra Vijil Morin

Third-year PhD student researching play in contexts of emergencies

Yuanrong Wang

First-year PhD student focusing on interventions aimed at improving children’s executive function

Chris Wellings

PhD researcher exploring early childhood home learning environments and the family factors & processes that can help give children strong educational and socio-emotional foundations

Zhiyu Zhao

PhD student at PEDAL, investigating the cross-cultural effects of parent-child playful interactions on the social-emotional wellbeing of young children

PEDAL Associates & Affiliates

Stephen Bayley

Stephen is a researcher affiliated with PEDAL and a member of the REAL Centre, University of Cambridge.

Emily Goodacre

Emily completed her PhD with PEDAL and worked as a Research Associate.

Kelsey Graber

Kelsey is a postdoctoral researcher whose work focuses on the role of play in children's health and wellbeing.

Dave Neale

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

Sophie Phillips

Sophie is a PEDAL alumni and an ongoing collaborator on the Helping Little Minds Thrive/Golden Threads project.

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.

Dina Fajardo-Tovar

Dina's research explored Mexican teachers' perspectives on using playful learning in their practice, particularly in urban and rural preschools.

Morgan Healy

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

Natalie Kirby

Tilly's doctoral work explored how early intervention can support the parent-child relationship and child social emotional development by promoting positive interactions, including through book sharing and play.

Krishna Kulkarni

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

Stephanie Nowack

Stephanie explored a South African Pedagogy for Play for autistic learners, focusing on exploration, enjoyment and empowerment.

Domnick Okullo

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

Paulina Pérez-Duarte Mendiola

Paulina's doctoral research aimed to capture children’s perspectives regarding their ‘interactions with Health Play Professionals’.

Emma Pritchard-Rowe

Emma completed her PhD with PEDAL and worked as a Research Associate.

Yanwen Wu

Yanwen's PhD project explored the relationship between pretend play and counterfactual reasoning from a temporal perspective, to understand how children make sense of the past to prepare for the future.

Vicky Yiran Zhao

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

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