Meet our amazing team of staff who will be working to bring our vision to life!
Challenge leads

Colin Foster
Centre Lead
Colin is a Reader in Mathematics Education in the Department of Mathematics Education at Loughborough University. Colin is leading Challenge 5 within CEML, addressing the translation of research into practice.

Camilla Gilmore
Centre Lead
Camilla is a Professor of Mathematical Cognition in the Department of Mathematics Education. Camilla is PI of CEML and is lead for Challenge 1 focusing on early development of mathematics skills.

Silke Göbel
Centre Lead
Silke is a Reader at the Department of Psychology at the University of York (UK). There she runs the Numerical Cognition Lab.
At CEML Silke leads Challenge 2 and contributes to Challenge 1.

Matthew Inglis
Centre Lead
Matthew is Professor of Mathematical Cognition in the Department of Mathematics Education at Loughborough University. Matthew leads on CEML’s capacity building work, and contributes to Challenges 2 and 5

Tim Jay
Centre Lead
Tim is the Head of the Department of Mathematics Education and Professor of Psychology of Education at Loughborough University. Tim leads work on Challenge 3 in CEML, which explores the ways in which children learn mathematics through interactions with others both in the classroom and at home.

Korbinian Moeller
Centre Lead
Korbinian is a Professor of Mathematical Cognition in the Department of Mathematics Education. Korbinian is heading Challenge 4 on the design of effective educational resources based on a better understanding of mathematical learning processes.
Co-investigators

Julia Bahnmüller
Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University
Julia is a lecturer in Mathematical Cognition in the Centre for Mathematical Cognition at Loughborough University. Within CEML, Julia will contribute to the identification of causal mechanisms that drive mathematics learning during primary school and how these can be used to inform the design of effective educational resources.

Ouhao Chen
Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University
Ouhao is a Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition in the Department of Mathematics Education at Loughborough University. Ouhao will contribute to CEML’s challenge 2 which involves working memory and challenge 4 designing educational resources.

Krzysztof Cipora
Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University
Krzysztof joined the Centre for Mathematical Cogntion as a lecturer in April 2020. Krzysztof’s responsibility within CEML would be methodological support, especially quantitative research methods, with a particular focus on looking into individual prevalence of observed effects. He will also be involved in training and capacity building activities, as well as data management.

Ann Dowker
College Lecturer in Psychology, University of Oxford
Ann Dowker is a University Research Lecturer at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.

Paul Howard-Jones
Professor of Neuroscience and Education, University of Bristol
Paul will be helping to turn the insights from CEML into resources and communications that support teachers’ efforts to foster young children’s mathematics. In particular, I will be attempting to understand how teachers already think about children’s learning and development in this area, and how scientific understanding can feed into that thinking and enhance their practice.

Hugo Lortie-Forgues
Senior Lecturer, Loughborough University
Hugo is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Mathematical Cognition at Loughborough University.

Andrew Manches
Senior Lecturer (cf. Associate Professor), University of Edinburgh
Dr Andrew Manches is a Senior Lecturer (cf. Associate Professor) at the University of Edinburgh, where he leads the Children and Technology group as co-director of the Digital Education Research Centre. Andrew will draw upon career experience in early years teaching and industry to support the design, development and promotion of resources from CEML. He will also contribute his theoretical knowledge of the role of embodiment in early numerical learning and the potential for emerging technologies.

Kinga Morsanyi
Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition, Loughborough University
Kinga is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition in the Department of Mathematics Education. Kinga is interested in the development of mathematical thinking and mathematics-related feelings and attitudes in both typical development and in special populations (including children with dyscalculia and autism).

Gaia Scerif
Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Oxford
Gaia has been based in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford since October 2006, where she is a Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research focuses on the development of attentional control and executive functions from early childhood into primary school, from their neural correlates to their outcomes on emerging cognitive abilities such as emerging mathematics learning. Gaia believes that this is an important focus because attention influences how we learn and behave in everyday situations, and it is particularly relevant in the classroom.

Francesco Sella
Senior lecturer, Department of Mathematics Education, Loughborough University
Francesco is a Senior lecturer at the Department of Mathematics Education, and his research focuses on understanding and improving early numeracy. Within the CEML, Francesco will contribute to creating novel methodologies to assess the development of early numerical skills (challenge 1) and will support the development and evaluation of educational resources to improve mathematical learning (challenge 4).

Sam Sims
Lecturer, UCL
Sam Sims is a Lecturer in the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO) at UCL. His research focuses on teachers, teaching, and teacher professional development. Sam teaches evaluation methods at UCL and has also published research on this topic. As part of CEML, Sam will be helping to design and evaluate the cost-effectiveness of training for early maths educators. You can find him on Twitter @DrSamSims.

Victoria Simms
Professor in Psychology, Ulster University
Victoria is a Professor of Developmental Psychology at Ulster University. In CEML Victoria will contribute to research on creating measures suitable to track development in the early years (Challenge 1) and understanding the home environment and it’s influences (Challenge 3). Victoria is also a member of the team leading CEML capacity building and training.

Liz Stokoe
Professor of Social Interaction, Loughborough University
Elizabeth Stokoe is Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University, UK and Professor II at the University of Eastern Norway. Liz will work particularly with Dr Natalie Flint and Prof Tim Jay on Challenge 3, analysing the social interactions between children, teachers, and parents about mathematics – both formally and tacitly – to help us better understand the contexts in which mathematical knowledge and skills evolve.

Iro Xenidou-Dervou
Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Cognition, Department of Mathematics Education, Loughborough University
Within the CEML, Iro will help develop novel methods for the sensitive assessment of numerical skills in the early years and examine how domain-general cognitive skills (e.g., executive functions) support early mathematical learning.
Research staff

Natalie Flint
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
Natalie is a Research Associate in CEML working on Challenge 3 which explores the ways in which children experience learning mathematics. Challenge 3 will analyse the interactions children have with others both in the classroom and at home. Natalie’s research interests are in talk and social interaction: namely, Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) of interactions in a variety of contexts.

Venera Gashaj
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
I earned my PhD in Developmental Psychology at the University of Bern. During my time as a doctoral student, I obtained a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Higher Education and a grant from the Swiss National Foundation, transitioning into postdoctoral research in Neuroscience at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. Before joining the team at the Centre for Early Mathematics Learning at Loughborough University, I was awarded the Teach@Tübingen fellowship and taught Embodied Cognition as well as Diagnostics at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany.

Ella James-Brabham
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
Ella completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2022 which explored why socioeconomic attainment gaps in early maths achievement emerge. Following her PhD, Ella joined Loughborough University as a postdoc to design and test a number line game to support early numerical skills. Ella is interested in understanding how early maths skills develop, and developing interventions to support these skills and narrow inequalities. Ella will be working in CEML on Challenges 1 and 2, which aim to develop new methods to study the emergence of maths skills in the early years, and identify causal predictors of maths achievement.

Hanna Weiers
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
Hanna completed her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s degree in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, before recently completing her PhD at Loughborough in the Centre for Mathematical Cognition. Hanna is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate in CEML working on Challenges 1 and 2.

Franz Wortha
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
Franz is a Research Associate in CEML with a technical focus. He will be contributing his expertise in statistical and machine learning modelling approaches across challenges. Franz is aiming to use state of the art analyses to investigate self-regulation and self-regulated learning processes, especially when learning with technologies.

Bethany Woollacott
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
Bethany has been at Loughborough since 2017, completing a Masters in Social Science Research in 2018, and recently finishing her PhD focussed on mathematical explanations and mathematics textbooks. Bethany will be working on Challenge 5, aiming to understand the best ways of communicating research to practitioners so that we can build a suite of effective professional development resources to support EY teachers.
Centre management

Priti Meredith
Centre Manager, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
Priti is responsible for the day to day running of CEML. As well as sitting on the Board of Directors, she oversees budgeting and financial management, monitoring and ESRC reporting, risk management, dialogue within and between institutions, recruitment, human resources, procurement and contracting. Prior to joining CEML, Priti spent the majority of her career working in research grant development and support.

Fiona Leedham
Partnership Development Manager, Centre for Early Mathematics Learning, Loughborough University
Fiona’s role as Partnership Development Manager is to establish and develop relationships with educational settings and non-academic partnerships, and support communications between Research staff and external groups. In addition to collaborating with Impact Panels and Advisory Boards, Fiona assists Priti in communications within the Centre. Before joining the CEML team, Fiona’s experience is in Primary Education as a teacher for many years, primarily working with children in KS1.