Meet our Team

Professor Essi Viding

Essi is the Principal Investigator of the Prosocial Project. She is a Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and a world leading expert in the study different developmental pathways to conduct problems and antisocial behaviour. Her research has been important in getting different types of children with conduct problems recognised in diagnostic schemes and has clear implications for individualising treatment approaches. Read more about Essi’s research here.

Essi co-directs UCL’s Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit with Professor Eamon McCrory and she also chairs UCL’s strategy for Children and Young People’s Mental Health. She is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She has been involved/is currently active in a number of panels advising on research funding and policy development, including the Early Intervention Foundation’s Expert Panel, European Research Council, Youth Endowment Fund Expert Panel, and UK Department of Health’s 10-year Framework for Mental Health Research. 

Professor Eamon McCrory 

Eamon is a Senior Investigator involved in the Prosocial Project. Eamon is a Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist. He co-directs UCL’s Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit with Professor Essi Viding. He is internationally recognised for his research using brain imaging and psychological approaches to investigate the impact of child maltreatment and trauma on emotional development and mental health. Eamon is also the Director of the UKRI Adolescent Health and Wellbeing Programme, Director of education and training at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, Visiting Professor at the Child Study Centre, Yale, and Co-Director of the UK Trauma Council.
Read more about Eamon’s research here.

Dr. Anne Gaule

Anne is a postdoctoral research fellow in the UCL Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit and is leading the Prosocial Project. She recently completed her PhD thesis in the UCL DRRU, exploring individual differences in social cognitive processing in adolescents with conduct problems. Prior to this project she has over 11 years of research experience, working on research projects exploring addiction, autism, prosopagnosia (face blindness) and infant/adolescent development. Her main interest is in better understanding individual differences in information processing in developmental psychopathology – especially in the social domain. She is particularly interested in research that has the potential to lead to strategies that can support parents and educators.

Student Team Members

Josh Wood

Josh was an honorary research assistant on the Prosocial Project from September 2022 – August 2023 while he was a placement student in his penultimate year of his BSc in Psychology at the University of Bath. Throughout his first two years of university, he developed an interest in developmental psychology. In particular, the mechanisms underlying childhood psychopathology and the application of research in this area and how it can help children and their families. Josh is now finishing his final year at Bath University, where he is focusing on parental child relationships in his dissertation.

Former Team Members

Mary Nickita

Mary was a research assistant with the Prosocial Project from January – April 2023. She is in the third year of her BS in Business and Psychology at Northeastern University. Mary is on placement with the UCL Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit as part of the Arcadia Abroad programme. She is excited to explore how the behaviour of children relates to the principles of developmental psychology.

Maya Steifel

Maya was an Undergraduate Research Assistant from January – April 2023. Maya is pursuing a Bachelors in Science in Neuroscience from Brandeis University which is located in the Boston, Massachusetts area (USA). During her semester here in London she is studying at Queen Mary University of London, and shifting her research focus from older adults, which she study at Brandeis, to adolescents. She plans to focus on how promoting positive social behaviors can influence adolescents who undergo challenges with disruptive behaviors in a social setting. Maya hopes to broaden her understanding of the different stages of human development by working with different age populations.

Grace Stohr

Grace was a Research Assistant with the Prosocial Project from September – December 2022, when she was in the final semester of her BA in Mathematics and Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. Grace was on placement with the UCL Developmental Risk and Resilience Unit as part of the Arcadia Abroad programme. Grace  helped us to set-up the project and and to carry out our piloting sessions. She is now applying for jobs in research.