My research focuses on mapping developmental pathways among children from diverse populations, with the goal of identifying early predictors of childhood cognitive, social, and emotional outcomes. One of my key goals is to facilitate the implementation of neurodevelopmental research into global settings.
I am currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge and work on the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) project. BRIGHT is a prospective longitudinal study that has been following infants in The Gambia from the antenatal period to early childhood. The aim of this study is to establish brain function-for-age curves in these two settings and to explore the contribution of undernutrition and poverty-related factors to neurodevelopment. My focus within this study is to investigate the contribution of psychosocial factors, such as the caregiving environment and maternal wellbeing, on cognitive and neural development of children in The Gambia.
With this work, I hope to elucidate how both risk and resilience factors in early life shape child development, and to support the harnessing of family and community factors that may help offset environmental risk.
