Interacting Minds Centre

Currently, I am a Doctoral Fellow at the Interacting Minds Centre, the Danish School of Education, and the Playtrack Research Group. My interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research focuses on the role of reflection in learning and attempts to identify the underlying cognitive processes that cause learners to reflect. I am just wrapping up my PhD, which means you will soon be able to read about my research here. For now, you can read a quick blog post on reflection and play with some practical tips on how to facilitate meaningful reflection practices, and a longer book chapter in which I, alongside my colleagues Marc Malmdorf Andersen and Andreas Roepstorff, argue for an increased focus on playful approaches in formal education.

I am also a Research Fellow at the Pedagogy of Play Research Group , short PoP (which is part of Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education). At PoP, we research how play can support learning in classrooms across the world. 

As part of this work, we have written a book that draws on our cross-cultural, empirical research to explore what it means to embrace play as a core part of learning in school. The book addresses three questions: Why do educators need a pedagogy of play? What does playful learning in schools look and feel like? and How can educators promote playful learning? It is also full of practices and strategies from the classroom to the staffroom, eight pictures of classroom practice from four countries, and 18 tools for teachers, school leaders, and professional development providers to support playful learning across content areas and age groups.

For the book, I have drawn a playful world. Though set in an imagined city, the drawing is based on real situations: the architecture is inspired by buildings from our four research sites (Denmark, South Africa, the U.S., and Colombia). The activities, too, are drawn from real situations (e.g., the PoP research team exploring materials in our offices). Visit the visual to explore more about the images contained within it. 

You might have guessed it already, but before studying Cognitive Science, I started out with a degree in Visual Design. I still use it to help communicate things (especially research findings) with the world. I have gathered some of my favourite projects for you here. 

If you are interested in Interdisciplinary research and/or playful learning, you might also like the podcast that I co-created and produce. It's called Interacting Minds and is currently hosted by myself and Arnault Vermillet. We have a season on play (co-hosted with play scholar Kim Holflod) and a season on research in interaction with.... ...art, ...dreams, ...wearable technologies, ...clinical practice, ...political decision making, ...