My Research Background

This is me several years back at my PhD graduation. Man I loved that hat. Some of you were keen to hear more about me and my background, so here it is.

I'm a mother, a researcher and I'm bloody passionate about advocating for parents so they feel more confident and capable. I have a PhD in Child Developmental Psychology and have spent the last 15 years working closely with infants and families to understand all I can about children's social and cognitive development.

After having my own child, I realised that a lot of the things I know from years of study and research was not filtering through to other parents in meaningful or helpful ways. I decided to try and do something about it and thus 'Science Minded' was born.

I’ve always been interested in child development. At University I studied a Bachelor of Psychology but decided that 3 years wasn't nearly long enough to be studying (eye roll). I added a bunch more and did an Honours year and a PhD.

My dissertation was all about the dynamic nature of the parent-child relationship and its impact on early social/cognitive development. I'm fascinated by the feedback-loop of parent-child intreactions and how both parent and child respond differently at different times for different reasons.

Fast forward a few years: Time and things and academia-jobs happened. When I had my son and took time away from work to care for him I was spending a lot of time thinking about what comes next. As the Mum of a newborn, I spent a lot of time scrolling.

I loved the parent-education content that my algorithm was sending my way. I remember thinking "some child dev psych people should really jump on this, this would be a great platform to share and disseminate knowledge". Then I thought... "You are a child dev psyc person. You could do it." So I went for it, and here we are.

Right now, I'm focusing my energies on writing and creating evidence-based information guides. These Science Minded Fact Packs are so very nearly finished and I'm planning to release them in the coming weeks. They are available for Pre-Order now at a substantial discount - so get them while they're cheap! Link is in my bio.