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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