Academic members and PhD students

Kathryn Asbury

Professor
Email: kathryn.asbury@york.ac.uk

Kathryn explores the influence of home and school environments on children’s academic achievement, behaviour and wellbeing.  She is interested in the school environments that cause differences between identical twins, and in how genes influence behaviour.

Beth Bell

Lecturer
email: beth.bell@york.ac.uk

My research expertise lies in youth wellbeing and mental health in the digital age. More specifically, I adopt a mixed-methods interdisciplinary approach to understanding the risks and opportunities afforded by digital media and technologies in relation to youth wellbeing and mental health, focusing on body image, self-harm, and disordered eating/exercise.

Dusana Dorjee

Senior Lecturer
Email: dusana.dorjee@york.ac.uk

I investigate the core neurocognitive mechanisms underlying wellbeing of children and adolescents. I examine modulations in these mechanisms by contemplative practices developing mindfulness, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude and other healthy qualities of the mind

Gill Francis

Research Fellow
email: gill.francis@york.ac.uk

My main research investigates specific ways that play impacts developmental outcomes for children with typical and atypical development. As example, my PhD explored the link between child pretend play and counterfactual reasoning and my postdoc work uses twin modelling to explore the etiology of child play and mental health.

Lisa Kim

Senior Lecturer
Email: lisa.kim@york.ac.uk

Lisa is interested in teacher non-cognitive characteristics and how they are associated with teacher and student outcomes (e.g., teacher effectiveness, teacher burnout and student academic achievement).

Nathalie Noret

Lecturer
email: nathalie.noret@york.ac.uk

My research interests broadly focus on understanding children and adolescents’ experiences of bullying. My current research focuses on examining the relationship between such experiences and poor mental health.

Elpis Pavlidou

Lecturer
Email: elpis.pavlidou@york.ac.uk

Elpida is studying reading and developmental dyslexia using both behavioural and neuroimaging methods. She is interested in both cognitive aspects of children's learning (in particular implicit statistical learning in typical and atypical populations) but also socio-emotional aspects (in particular socio-emotional resilience in dyslexia).

Professor of Educational Evaluation
Email: carole.torgerson@york.ac.uk 

English and music education; research designs for educational and social policy evaluation 

Umar Toseeb

Senior Lecturer
Email: umar.toseeb@york.ac.uk

Umar is interested in understanding mental health and wellbeing during childhood and adolescence. Specifically, he investigates individual differences in mental health and wellbeing of individuals with special educational needs using genetic and behavioural data from population-based longitudinal datasets.

Sophie von Stumm

Chair, Psychology in Education
Email: sophie.vonstumm@york.ac.uk

Sophie studies the causes and consequences of individual differences in psychological and behavioural development across the life course. She takes an inter-disciplinary approach to observing behaviour and environments, primarily through the application of new assessment technologies that enable collecting big, high-quality data. 

Sarah Wild

Teaching and Research Support Officer
Email: sarah.wild@york.ac.uk