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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.