Dr Marina Bazhydai is the Director of the Active Learning Lab (ALL) at Lancaster University. She holds the Lecturer position at the Department of Psychology and is affiliated with the Developmental Psychology research group and the Infant and Child Development Lab and its subunit, the Babylab. Prior to completing her PhD in developmental psychology at Lancaster University, she obtained an Ed.M. degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, B.A. and M.A. degrees from Belarus State University, worked as an educator, and held research positions at Harvard and Yale Universities in the USA.
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Postdoctoral Researchers
Dr Mathilde H. Prenevost is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University’s Department of Psychology. Her research focuses on developing the Curiosity Battery, a comprehensive tool to assess curiosity in school-aged children. She completed her PhD at the University of Oslo, where she studied children’s sudden insight. These two lines of work reflect her broader interests in epistemic emotions and the interplay between theory and measurement in psychological science.
PhD Students
Malcolm Ka Yu Wong is a second year PhD at Lancaster University with the 1+3 ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) scholarship from the North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership. His PhD project is entitled, “The Emergence of Domain-Specific Implicit Mentalising”. Malcolm is a graduate of the LU holding a BSc and MSc Psychology degree. At ALL, he has been primarily involved in the caregiver curiosity in child development research project, which aims to understand infant caregivers’ intrinsic motivation behind their participation in lab-based research and whether it affects their knowledge of infant development and further curiosity in this topic. Malcolm is also assisting with the curiosity in word learning project which uses a gaze-contingent eye-tracking paradigm. Malcolm has been an active member of the Lancaster Babylab.
MSc Students
Research Assistants
Emily Ford is an MSc student studying Developmental Psychology after completing a BSc in Psychology at Lancaster University. She has been involved in the Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) since her second year of her undergraduate degree, and has also volunteered with the Babylab since 2023. She is currently working as a research assistant on the Curiosity Battery project and is interested in conducting her own research into curiosity.
Alumni
Maddy Anderson graduated with the BSc Hons Natural Sciences degree. She was involved with ALL via Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) in 2020-2021 on the project investigating infant curiosity in social learning and was instrumental to developing a novel behavioural coding scheme to apply to naturalistic home video recordings of infant-caregiver interactions. Maddy currently works as a secondary school teacher in Manchester.
Ellie Bradeley graduated with the BSc Psychology degree. She was involved with ALL via Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) in 2020-2021 on the project investigating infant curiosity in social learning. She was instrumental to developing a novel behavioural coding scheme to apply to naturalistic home video recordings of infant-caregiver interactions. Ellie currently works as an Education Mental Health Practitioner.
Freya Hill completed the MSc in Developmental Disorders programme at Lancaster University in 2021. She has a broad interest in infant and child development, particularly with regards to active learning, infant-caregiver interactions and curiosity. She also has a fascination for neurotypical development and worked as an SEN tutor in a specialist college. Freya currently works as an Assistant Clinical Psychologist.
Elena Gkari was a Master’s student in 2020-2021 on the Psychological Research Methods programme at Lancaster University. She also holds a BSc degree in Marketing and Communication from the Athens University of Economics and Business, and has worked in the marketing sector of toy companies and NGOs for the past 5 years. She is interested in how infants explore the world around them through play and what drives their curiosity. She is also interested in investigating how toys are designed and what makes a toy attractive to an infant. As many toy companies nowadays prioritize the production of educational toys, and parents prefer to spend more money on them, Elena’s dissertation aimed to explore how an educational toy can also be attractive to infants and how infant development can be accelerated through play.
Katy Small graduated with a BSc Psychology degree. She has been involved with ALL via Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) in summer 2021, primarily assisting on the project investigating wonder in school age children and teachers.
Emily Dreyer was an MSc student studying for her Developmental Psychology Masters at Lancaster University, previously having completed a BSc in Psychology at Lancaster University. Emily has previously held a position in the Lancaster Babylab via Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) in her second year at university. Emily is interested in pursuing a career in clinical psychology.
Dr. Daphne Barker was a Research Associate at ALL in 2022-2023. She completed her PhD at The University of Manchester and MRC’s Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham, in the field of auditory neuroscience. She completed a post-doctoral study in auditory neuroscience before moving into the field of children’s language development. She is interested in fair and open science and research that aims to reduce the educational achievement gap between those from privileged backgrounds and those in less privileged circumstances. Daphne’s is currently researching the concept of wonder and curiosity in primary school children.
Charlotte Rothwell was a PhD student, and completed her BSc degree at Lancaster University. Her PhD research investigated how children’s interests and attentional mechanisms affect word learning in autistic children, in comparison to neurotypical children. Charlotte’s work as a Research Assistant at ALL investigated information-seeking, particularly the concept of wonder, in primary school children and teachers. Charlotte has been actively involved with the Babylab since 2016.
Charlotte Thompson was part of ALL in her final year of the BSc Psychology degree. She has been involved with ALL via the Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) in 2022-23, primarily assisting on the project investigating wonder in school age children and teachers. She has an extensive interest in developmental psychology and hopes to work with children in a clinical capacity in the future.
Michelle Kan was part of ALL as a third-year BSc Psychology student. She studied social science for two years before starting this degree. She became involved with ALL via Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) and assisted on a range of research projects.
Amie Suthers completed an Integrated Masters of Psychology degree. She was involved with ALL via Psychology Employability Programme (PEP) between 2021-2023 and assisted on projects related to children’s information transmission.
El Smith completed their BSc Psychology degree at Lancaster. At ALL, they have been involved in multiple projects, including testing for a project relating to curiosity driven learning in infants. El is currently pursuing a PhD developmental psychology at Lancaster University.
Didar Karadağ completed her PhD in 2024, with a thesis entitled: “Ontogeny of Teaching Behaviour in Early Childhood: What Type of Information Do Young Children Transmit to Others?”. She is broadly interested in how infants and young children actively learn information from their environment and how they transmit information to others around them. In addition to her PhD studies, at ALL, Didar also worked on several other projects related to children-led information transmission.
Elena Altmann completed her PhD in June 2024 with a thesis entitled: “In the Driver’s Seat of Development: An Investigation of Infants’ Curiosity-driven Exploration”. Her research interests include fundamental mechanisms of infant development such as active exploration, learning and individual characteristics. In addition to her PhD studies, at ALL, Elena also worked on several other projects related to curiosity and learning.