Anushay is a final-year DPhil student and the Sylva-Chan Research Fellow at the Department.
Anushay’s DPhil research focuses on investigating Pakistani children’s social-emotional development and how that relates to their academic skills and the classroom environment. She is supervised by Professor Iram Siraj and Dr Katharina Ereky-Stevens. Anushay received the Patrice Engle Dissertation Grant Award from the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) in 2023.
As the Sylva-Chan Research Fellow, Anushay will be focusing on developing a continued professional development programme for teachers that aims to improve the language and communication support they provide to children in early years classrooms and settings. She will be working alongside Professor Kathy Sylva and other academics from the department.
Anushay completed her BSc Psychology from UCL, where she also started her master’s in Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology. She was based at Yale University for her master’s thesis, where she worked with Dr Craig Bailey at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to investigate children’s emotion development. Anushay also worked as a part-time research assistant at the Developmental Diversity Lab at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, investigating the cross-cultural development of autistic children. Anushay’s research interests include understanding child development across different cultures, factors that might be affecting it, and devising culture-specific ways to support children’s holistic development through the educational system. She is also keen on improving the research scope in Pakistan by working with Pakistani researchers, educators, practitioners, and families.
Publications
Papers
- Mazhar, A., & Bailey, C., S. (2024). Understanding Children’s Emotion-Specific Biases: How They Relate to Child and Family Factors, Emotion Recognition Accuracy, and Social Behaviour. Cognition & Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2024.2408652
- Mazhar, A., Ellis, K., Moss, J., & White, S. J., Dr. (2023). Effects of Bilingualism, Household Size and Siblings on Theory of Mind Development in Pakistani and British Children. [Preprint] https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/93mbe
Presentations
- Mazhar, A., & Bailey, C., S. (2023, March). Understanding Children’s Emotion-Specific Biases: How They Relate to Child-Level Factors and Emotion Recognition Accuracy [Paper Presentation]. Society for Research in Child Development, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States.
- Mazhar, A. (2022, April). Understanding children’s emotion-specific biases and how they relate to age, gender, and emotion recognition. Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence Spring Preview, New Haven, United States.
- Mazhar, A. (2021, December). Does an extended family improve mentalising in Autistic Children: a cross-cultural perspective from UK & Pakistan. 2nd International Foundation University Conference of Psychology, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
- Mazhar, A. (2020, October). Developing a non-profit to advance autism research in Pakistan. Anna Freud Centre Seminar Series, London, United Kingdom.
Posters
- Mazhar, A. (2021, November). Theory of Mind in Autistic Children: a cross-cultural perspective from UK and Pakistan. Harvard Trends in Psychology Summit, Cambridge, United States.
- Mazhar, A. (2021, November). Understanding children’s emotion-specific biases and how they relate to age, gender, and emotion recognition. Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence Research Rounds, New Haven, United States.