Director and lead researchers
Paul is LEGO Professor of Play in Education, Development and Learning at Cambridge University, UK. He leads a research team investigating the role of play in children’s early development. He also works as a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the UK National Health Service. Paul's research is focussed on early child development and he has a particular interest in how we give children the best start in life, including the prevention of emotional and behavioural difficulties. Much of this work has explored the role of fathers, as well as mothers, in children’s lives and development.
Jenny is a Lecturer in Psychology and Education and her work at PEDAL focuses on investigating the role of play in children’s social development, and the rigorous development of meaningful and reliable ways to measure play. Jenny is the lead researcher on the PEDAL research strand that examines 'What is play?'.
PEDAL Researchers
Elian’s research interests focus on social and emotional development in early childhood. Elian completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia, examining the longitudinal association between children’s emotion management, socio-cognitive understanding and peer relationships. Following her PhD, Elian went on to do post-doctoral research at the Evidence Based Practice Unit at University College London and the Anna Freud Centre, exploring children and young people’s emotional well-being and mental health difficulties in the school context. She is now a Research Associate at PEDAL working on a longitudinal project examining the antecedents and outcomes of play in early childhood.
Christine works with Paul and Eloise on the 'Play in Early Life' research area.
Eloise works with Paul and Christine on 'Play in Early Life'. Her current research interest lies in the effectiveness of a video-feedback parenting programme (VIPP) to increase caregiver sensitivity with different populations. She is a trial co-ordinator and clinical supervisor on three different studies testing the programme’s effectiveness with foster carers and foster children, parents with personality disorders and teachers in primary schools.
Dave’s research interests revolve around how play relates to learning, particularly in infancy and early childhood. He was awarded his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2017, for which he studied mothers’ play interactions with their 1- to 2-year-old infants. From August 2017 to August 2018 he was part of Roberta Golinkoff’s Child’s Play, Learning & Development Lab at the University of Delaware. In addition to his research, he has acted as a consultant on play and learning for The LEGO Foundation and Skylark Learning Ltd., and given research advice or briefings to the US Military Operations Research Society and the UK Houses of Parliament.
PEDAL Policy
Sally helps the PEDAL team to communicate key messages from the play research for professionals and policy makers. Sally has worked in children’s policy for a number of leading charities in the UK, and in local and national government in the UK and Australia.
PEDAL Administration
Helen is responsible for the smooth running of the research centre, including finance, governance and communications. She provides professional support to the team and liaises with our partners and supporters. She has worked in higher education, local government and charities.
Lisa is the Projects Assistant supporting the research team and operational aspects of the PEDAL centre. Lisa has a professional background in events management, marketing, graphic design and administration within education and the creative industries.
Research Assistants
Natalie is a trained secondary science teacher in her last year of the part-time masters in psychology and education at Cambridge. Consumed by the power of research, she decided to move on from teaching in the hopes of reaching a wider audience through research, utilising and creating evidence-based research to inform teaching practice. Natalie is assisting in research that seeks to understand the mechanisms of learning in early childhood.
Hayley is a research assistant for Dr Sara Baker and works on a number of projects looking at the role of play in school. This includes a teacher development programme to foster children’s autonomy, investigating the measurement of children’s engagement, and comparing approaches to measuring executive function in the classroom.
Kayleigh is a research assistant working with Paul Ramchandani and Christine O’Farrelly within the ‘Play in Early Life’ research area.
PEDAL Hub team
Anna is responsible for the day to day management of the PEDAL Hub website and database. If you have any queries relating to the website or any on PEDAL Hub, you can email her here.
PhD Students
Stephen Bayley is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on education for adaptability and how children in low-income settings develop skills like creativity and problem solving. He holds a Masters in International Education and Development from the University of Sussex and previously worked as an Education Adviser and Project Manager on programmes in Nigeria, Rwanda and Tanzania. Stephen initially qualified and practised as a lawyer and has worked with NGOs and community initiatives across Africa and Latin America.
Janina is a PhD student in the Centre for Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL). Her research interest concerns young children’s self-regulation development in classroom contexts. Janina wants to better understand whether specific pedagogical approaches are more beneficial for children’s self-regulation development. Furthermore, she is interested in how children’s self-regulation can be measured in the classroom in an ecologically valid way.
Emily is a PhD student working with Jenny Gibson and Paul Ramchandani. Her work uses data from the ChiRPP study to examine children's communication with their peers during play, exploring how children make decisions together about the ongoing play, and to consider how this communication may be related to characteristics of the children.
Lenka is a PhD candidate supervised by Dr. Jenny Gibson. She is exploring social play, friendships, and wellbeing of children with primary difficulties in language development. Her study design is a series of case studies and Lenka collects data via multiple methods: observations, video recordings of children playing with playmobil, school mapping, one-on-one meetings using art-informed methods. Promoting participatory research, Lenka aims to give active voice to children in research about their social play and social lives.
Krishna is a PhD student supervised by Paul Ramchandani. Her research will be examining parent-child playfulness, and its importance in child outcomes. She will also be exploring parent-child relationships through play in India.
A former primary school teacher herself, Soizic is interested in helping teachers foster a love of learning in children. Her work is split into two main areas: working directly with teachers as part of the Stepping Stones project to help them make changes to their practice, and looking at how we can measure children’s inner motivation, the engine of both play and learning. Before joining the world of education, she wanted to be an entomologist – if you like random facts about ants, she’s the person to ask – and worked in conservation to try and save the planet. She decided working with children was the best solution.
Vicky is a PhD student working with Dr Jenny Gibson from PEDAL and Dr Ben Alcott from REAL. Her PhD project looks at the relation between communication disorders and psychosocial adversities, and how play can be an effective intervention to promote children’s social and emotional skills. Her research interests cut across psychology and sociology of education. She is particularly interested in how different social, economic and psychological factors intertwine with each other in promoting children’s educational achievement and life outcomes in both developed and developing contexts.
