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My first ‘psychology’ memory was reading every book that my local library had about Ancient Egypt. I was fascinated about how they pulled people’s brains out through the nose, and what they thought about the relationship between the mind, the body, and the spirit. It was all quite scientific – i.e. they would study how best to conduct the embalment, they would develop instructions and train other people how to treat the dead, and they did a lot of spiritual thinking about what happens after people die, which is quite philosophical. The Egyptian empire went on for so long that Ancient Egyptians even studied other (even more) Ancient Egyptians, and all of this understand eventually reached me, through years and years of research and reflection.

When I started school, or rather started studying more deeply, I actually didn’t know what I wanted to do. I went through phases of wanting to be a vet, an artist, a psychologist… But I came back to those scientific roots when I started studying psychology. I was able to pick up those same questions about what people think and why, which then led me to complete a degree in Psychology at the University of Glasgow.

During my degree, I thought that I wanted to become a Clinical Psychologist, because I loved working with people and I wanted to particularly work with people who need extra support, e.g. in mental health. But I was also really enjoying research, so I stayed there for a while, completing a Masters in Research Methods in Psychological Sciences and then a PhD in Clinical Brain Sciences (Developmental Psychology). Essentially, this means that I kept asking questions about people, and kept learning new ways to understand human thought and behaviour.

During my PhD I studied how digital building blocks (i.e. a bit like LEGO but when you put them together they light up, make noise, or move) can support autistic children  to communicate and engage in social play. Often, this can be quite difficult for autistic children but what I learned was that this type of playful and engaging experience can actually reveal a lot about a child’s strengths, skills and interests. After my PhD I continuned similar work where I was designing digitally interactive exhibits for science museums across the UK and the US.

I then had the most amazing opportunity to go and work for a research team at LEGO – how could I say no? My job at LEGO was to design and manage research projects about how children learn through play. I was particularly interested in how we measure what children are learning, and how this varies across different cultures and parts of the world. For example, do children in Colombia learn in the same way as children in China, would they desribe their playful learning experiences in the same way?

I then returned to the UK to work for Play Included, an organisation which trains people on how to use therapeutic LEGO play to support children with autism.

Play Included is a social enterprise (which means we run as a business but our profits are reinvested to charities) which teachers adults how to apply learning through play with LEGO bricks to support children and young people. We teach adults (including teachers and psychologists) how to use collaborative LEGO play to  support children and young people, particularly those who might need some extra support in the classroom. We also design activities to help families and teachers bring play into the home and classroom more widely. It’s my job to understand the impact of the work that we do, ask for feedback, and help guide our work to make learning through play possible for all children.

No two days are actually the same in a charity, here is a sample of some things that I have done recently:

• Visited Brick Clubs in Mexico, spoke to children, their families, and professionals and asked what they thought about Brick Club
• Created leaflets and communication materials which talk about the research that we have done, or talk about research and other people have done that we think is relevant to the work that we do
• Met with a team of professionals who are testing Brick Clubs in hospital settings, asked them what they thought about Brick Club
• Designed new surveys to ask people about our training and Brick Clubs, and also looked at data from these surveys and wrote about them in a report
• Worked on a newspaper article about our work
• Met with another team of professionals who would like to see whether Brick Clubs can help children who have ADHD
• Went to a conference and gave talk in front of 100 people about how to use therapeutic LEGO play to support autistic children
• Worked on designing and testing a new mobile app to help people run their Brick Clubs
• Read some new research about how applying therapeutic LEGO play can boost children’s wellbeing, so that they are less likely to need mental health services in the future