
Sophie von Stumm – director
Sophie is Professor of Psychology in Education at the University of York. She previously worked at the University of Chichester, University of Edinburgh and Goldsmiths University of London , where she also completed her PhD in 2010.
Sophie studies the causes and consequences of individual differences in psychological and behavioural development across the life course. She takes an inter-disciplinary approach to observing behaviour and environments, primarily through the application of new assessment technologies that enable collecting big, high-quality data. Sophie focuses her studies in particular on three areas: (1) the effects of early life environments on children’s language development; (2) the role of personality traits like curiosity and imagination for learning; and (3) the relationship between genome-wide polygenic scores and educational attainment.