Rachel is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Reading, employed on a UKRI future leaders fellowship examining the links between adventurous play and childhood anxiety. She completed her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2019 examining the role of socio-emotional factors and lateralization for emotion processing on adolescent emotion recognition. Rachel has a broad interest in developmental psychology, including in social cognition, play and mental health. Before starting her Postdoctoral position in January 2020, Rachel worked as a Teaching Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, primarily teaching research methods and statistics and has worked as a Research Assistant examining interventions to alleviate statistics anxiety in psychology students. Rachel previously held the role as Developmental Section Representative for the Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group (PsyPAG, 2017-2019), and since 2017, has sat on the BPS Developmental Section committee representing the views of ECRs.

Twitter: @rachelnesbit

Email: r.j.nesbit@reading.ac.uk

Emily is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Surrey, working on the BLOCS project, examining the link between LEGO construction, spatial skills and mathematics achievement in 7-9 year olds. She completed her PhD at Durham University in 2019 and she is broadly interested in cognition and academic learning in neurodivergent children. Emily sits on the BPS Developmental Section committee and is the Newsletter Editor for the Developmental Forum bi-annual publication.

Twitter: @mimsiemcd

Email: e.mcdougal@surrey.ac.uk

Ellen is a PhD student in the Centre for Developmental Disorders at Durham University. Ellen’s research interests lie primarily in the area of social behaviour and mental health in neurodevelopmental conditions. Her PhD research (funded by the Baily Thomas Charitable Trust) aims to understand social vulnerability in children with the neurodevelopmental conditions Autism and Williams syndrome. Prior to her PhD, Ellen studied at Newcastle University (BSc Psychology) and Durham University (MA Research Methods in Developmental Psychology). She has worked as a Research Assistant on grant-funded projects at Durham, Sheffield and Goldsmiths Universities.

In August 2019, Ellen joined the BPS Developmental Section committee as the Postgraduate Representative. She also sits on the BPS Psychology Postgraduate Affairs Group (PsyPAG). In these roles, Ellen aims to represent the views of the postgraduate developmental community.

Twitter: @ellenridley

Email: ellen.ridley@durham.ac.uk

Charlotte is an Associate Lecturer on the Educational Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP) and Children’s Well-being Practitioner (CWP) courses at the University of Exeter in Clinical Education Development and Research (CEDAR).

She is a mixed methods researcher, and her research is focused on improving children’s mental health within educational settings. She is particularly passionate about improving children’s emotional adjustment over the transition from primary to secondary school. For her BSc in English and Psychology (Keele University) Charlotte explored the significance of social support as a protective factor over primary-secondary school transition. For her MSc in Child Development, in Psychology, (Keele University) she examined the significance of emotional centred support intervention timing during this time. Charlotte's PhD (Keele and Manchester Metropolitan University) was in the area of Educational/Developmental Psychology, and was the first study to design and evaluate a universal emotional-centred intervention to improve children’s emotional well-being over primary-secondary school transition.

Aside from academia, Charlotte works as an Applied Behaviour Analyst Tutor, and also sits on the BPS Developmental Section Committee and the BPS ECR committee.

Twitter: @_CBagnall

Email: c.l.bagnall@exeter.ac.uk