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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.

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 at PEDAL.

Joy Davis

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

Emily Goodacre

Emily is a Research Associate at PEDAL.

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.

Emma Pritchard-Rowe

Emma is a Research Associate at the Faculty of Education.

Eloise Stevens

Eloise is a Research Associate and Child Therapist.

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.

Debbie Kwan

Debbie is a second year 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.

Rebecca Reid

Rebecca is a first-year PhD student at PEDAL, researching play and adolescence in the context of school exclusions.

Rebecca Sands

Rebecca is a first year PhD student interested in children's development of critical thinking skills through the English primary curriculum. 

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 first year PhD student researching play in contexts of emergencies.

Zhiyu Zhao

Zhiyu is a second year PhD student with PEDAL.

PEDAL Associates & Affiliates

Stephen Bayley

Stephen is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with PEDAL and an Associate Member of the REAL Centre, University of Cambridge.

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.

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.

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's PhD research 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.

Paulina Pérez-Duarte Mendiola

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

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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