University of Oxford

Prof. Edward Melhuish is Professor of Human Development at the Department of Education, University of Oxford. Melhuish’ research interests are in understanding social and communicative development from birth to adulthood including environmental influences through the use of longitudinal studies. Other interests include: Early childhood education and care (ECEC), parenting, child poverty and disadvantage and the linking of child development and social policy. He is Principal Investigator of the large-scale longitudinal study Effective Provision Preschool Education (EPPE) in England.

Prof. Jacqueline Barnes is Professor of Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London and Honorary Senior Psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic. She is an internationally recognised expert in the study of community characteristics, family functioning and young children's behaviour, conducting research in the UK, Europe and the USA. She has studied the identification and management of emotional and behavioural problems of young children in pre-school settings; methods of assessing parental behaviour; the relevance of measures of parenting for different cultural and socioeconomic groups; evaluation of child mental health and child abuse prevention programmes; early intervention to prevent children's mental health problems; the relevance of community characteristics and the environment to family functioning and child development; the impact of serious parental illness or bereavement on families; and the use of qualitative methodologies to investigate family functioning and child behaviour.

Dr. Katharina Ereky-Stevens is a researcher at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She is part of the Families, Effective Learning and Literacy (FELL) research group. Her main research interests are the quality of early childhood education and care (ECEC), child–caregiver interactions, and the relationship between ECEC quality and children’s development. She has worked on a number of research projects on early childhood education, including the Families, Children and Childcare project (FCCC), the Effective Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) project, and a Viennese Transition to Childcare project (WIKI). She was involved in writing a number of research reviews, including a recent Sutton Trust review of the research on quality of ECEC for children under three, and implications for policy and practice. Most recently, she worked as a researcher in the European CARE project (Curriculum and Quality Analysis and Impact Review of European ECEC), and contributed to CARE reports on European ECEC curricula and culture-sensitive quality and curriculum frameworks, ECEC quality monitoring systems, and a review of research on the effects of ECEC on child development.

Dr. Lyudmila Nurse is a sociologist with over 25 years of experience of research into social institutions, education, culture and identities; social mobility and migration, ethnic minorities in Europe, European cultural and educational policies; comparative qualitative, biographical, ethnographical studies. She has experience of large scale international multi-disciplinary research projects funded by the European research agencies. Her previous projects included qualitative and biographical studies in European identity projects “ENRI-East” (EC FP7) and “ The United States of Europe” (EC Culture Programme) in which she worked on the analysis of families’ cultural reproduction, identities and cultural diversity, ethnic minorities, identities and music, inter-generational comparative analysis. She has experience in international consultancy work in projects related to social development, poverty monitoring in Europe.

Pinar Kolancali recently completed a master's degree in child development and education in the department of education at the University of Oxford. She is currently doing a PhD. The thesis project focuses on the language development of Turkish-English speaking bilingual children in relation to language and literacy resources provided at home.

Rebecca Tracz is a research assistant at the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. She is part of the Families, Effective Learning and Literacy (FELL) research group. Her main research interests include the professional development of early years staff, supporting quality learning environments and parent engagement in children’s learning.