Who We Are?

We are an interdisciplinary team of academic researchers from six universities across the UK. We applied our diverse expertise to answer the following question: How do children contribute to local community cohesion?

Middlesex University

Newcastle University

Magdalena Dujczynski

Middlesex University

University of Exeter

London School of Economics
and Political Science

University of Kent

University of Kent

Queen’s University Belfast

Helen King

University of Newcastle

Who We Are?

We are an interdisciplinary team of academic researchers from six universities across the UK. We applied our diverse expertise to answer the following question: How do children contribute to local community cohesion?

Dr Mona Sakr

Middlesex University

Mona is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood and researcher in Early Years (EY) provision. Her research focusses on leadership in EY and the contribution it makes to quality learning environments and interactions, particularly for babies under the age of 2 years.

Dr Emily Murphy

Newcastle University

Emily is a Senior Lecturer in Children’s Literature. Her research is interested in the intersections between constructions of national identity and childhood, including new forms of identity in a ‘global’ or ‘post-national’ world.

Magdalena Dujczynski

Middlesex University

Magdalena is a Research Assistant at and Early Years Initial Teacher Training Tutor (EYITT). Her research interests include multilingualism and culturally relevant leadership in the Early Years sector.

Dr Lorien Jasny

University of Exeter

Dr Lorien Jasny is an Associate Professor of Computational Social Science at Exeter University. She investigates how social networks both enable and constrain communities and collective action.

Dr Charlotte Haberstroh

London School of Economics
and Political Science

Charlotte is the Programme and Curriculum Design Lead for King’s Business School. Previous research has focussed on the political origins and consequences of educational inequalities in Western Europe and, more recently, interdisciplinarity in education and research.

Dr Lindsey Cameron

University of Kent

Lindsay is a Reader in Psychology. Her research is interested in how children become ‘social beings’, and more specifically, how do children develop the social knowledge and skills that we as adults take for granted?

Dr Ronke Adeyanju

University of Kent

Ronke is a Social Developmental Psychologist interested in acculturation and socio-emotional development in minority ethnic children. Her current research focusses partly on intergenarational transmission of cultural values among ethnic minory groups

Dr Jocelyn Dautel

Queen’s University Belfast

Jocelyn’s research investigates the development of social cognition with an emphasis on how children categorise others into social groups, with a particular focus on studying children in contexts of intergroup conflict.

Helen King

University of Newcastle

Helen is a Research Associate in the School of English. Her interests include reader response research, radical children’s literature, narratives of displacement and migration, and participatory approaches to children’s studies.