The CEN is delighted to welcome Dr Rebecca Gordon and Professor Natasha Kirkham as new members of the CEN management committee.

Rebecca Gordon is a Chartered Psychologist at the UCL Institute of Education where she is currently the Academic Head of Learning and Teaching. She also lectures in cognitive psychology, educational neuroscience, and research methods and statistics for the psychology undergraduate and Masters programmes at the UCL Institute of Education.

Rebecca’s research focuses on working memory and executive functions in children and adults as a means for understanding higher-order cognitive abilities and cognitive impairments. Her current work examines aspects of executive function and motor control as they apply to different curriculum areas, particularly mathematics and science learning.

Natasha Kirkham is Professor of Developmental Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also Chair of Ethics for the School of Science at Birkbeck. In addition to her research, Natasha works on various projects, including public science communication events and SOFAR, a society dedicated to supporting women in science.

Natasha’s research focuses on the development of visuospatial understanding, cognition, and attention in infants and preschool-age children. In particular, her research addresses the questions of how infants learn about their visuospatial environment and what are the roles of attention and memory in young children’s learning and development. Over the past 5 years, Natasha’s work has been focussing on how the home environment, specifically noise and household chaos, affects the development of attention, and eventual academic outcomes.