Dr Lindsey Cameron 

Reader in Psychology at the University of Kent

Dr Lindsey Cameron has over 20 years of experience devising, delivering and communicating research on equality, discrimination and prejudice in childhood. Dr Cameron is  Reader in Psychology, and specialises in applied research, working extensively with charitable and educational organisations (e.g. The Linking Network, Anne Frank Trust) to develop and evaluate school-based interventions to promote equality and inclusion. She has a strong track record in conducting research for advocacy and equality organisations, including the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Dr Cameron is currently leading education research projects examining the role of schools and children in creating community integration and cohesion, civic education, and ally behaviours.

Growing up in a Diverse World: Insights from social and developmental psychology

We are entering an age of increased societal diversity, extending across social categories including ethnicity  and race, religion, gender, disability and many other areas. This diversity is reflected in our schools and colleges. In an increasingly diverse world, understanding how young people experience diversity, how they are shaped by it, and the strategies used by young people to manage diversity, is essential for the well‐being and success of future generations, and a key challenge for educators today. 

In this talk, I will provide new insights and cutting-edge research from social and developmental psychology to examine young people’s experience and understanding of diversity, focusing on social relations across lines of difference. Specially, in this presentation I will draw on intergroup contact theory, and contemporary findings, to examine such questions as: How do children understand social groups and difference? How do young people form relationships across lines of difference? What are the barriers and promoters of these important relationships? How do young people understand discrimination, equality and justice? And what is the role of schools, families and peers in these developing abilities, understandings and behaviours? 

In a changing world, and an increasingly diverse one, there is more than ever a need for increasing our knowledge about how children and young people understand, respond to and thrive in diverse settings. We will consider how psychological findings can be applied to promote social cohesion and positive youth development in education settings.

 Dr Ashok Jansari MA (Cantab), DPhil (Sussex), CPsychol, AFBPsS. 

Dr Jansari has been working in the field of neuropsychology for over 30 years. He studied Experimental Psychology at King’s College, Cambridge. He followed this with a doctorate in autobiographical memory at the University of Sussex where he was supervised by Professor Alan Parkin. He conducted his postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Iowa in the United States. Since establishing his own research programme, in 2004, he was awarded the Cermak Award for Best Research in Memory Disorders the International Neuropsychological Society and in 2008 was awarded a Media Fellowship by the British Association for the Advancement of Science for his skills in communicating science to the general public. 

In addition, national TV, and radio appearances, he has lectured extensively throughout Europe, North America, South America, India, Malaysia, Israel, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. For this work, he was nominated for a British Academy Charles Darwin Award for communicating science to non-specialist audiences. 

He conducts research on a wide range of populations including healthy individuals, those with brain damage, ex-offenders, men undergoing treatment for prostate cancer and children who are either typical or have developmental disorders such as Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He is one of the UK's experts on face recognition including face-blindness (also known as 'prosopagnosia') and exceptional face memory (known as 'super-recognition'.  

In October 2022, his major new textbook A Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuropsychology was published by Sage for the international market.

  Dr Bo Kelestyn 

Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and Innovation Consultant at Sprint Valley

What does it mean to innovate in your teaching and learning? Lessons from design thinking.

Innovation in teaching and learning, particularly in the pandemic and post pandemic world, is expected. But it does not happen by chance. There is a need to understand and pinpoint the ways in which we can co-create innovation within the enabling constrains we are working in.  

Design thinking, as a way of thinking and doing things differently, can help us reframe this challenge into opportunity. It presents new possibilities for the teaching community. With its multiple touch points to psychology, it has the potential to reinvent what and how we teach and inspire ourselves in the process of inspiring the next generation of psychologists.  

In this keynote, we will explore design thinking as a tool and a mindset. Used by some of the most successful organisations worldwide it builds on multiple concepts from the discipline of Psychology. Together we will uncover practical steps in which you can embed its principles into your teaching and learning innovation, as well as your personal and professional development.