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Elisabeth Reinisch

Department, Institution: Institute for the Science of Early Years, UEL
UBEL Pathway: Psychology and Social Change
Supervisor: Prof Sam Wass (UEL) and Dr Laura Katus (University of Greenwich)
About Me

I am a PhD student based at the Institute for the Science of Early Years at UEL, investigating caregiver-infant relationships, in a studentship co-funded by Procter & Gamble. Prior to this, I completed a Master of Science in Child Development at UCL and a Bachelor of Science in Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE. Furthermore, I have childcare and teaching experience with children across all ages; most significantly, I recently spent a year teaching German and French to 11–18-year-olds at London secondary schools as part of my PGCE at the IOE, where I obtained Qualified Teacher Status. Originally from Austria, I have thoroughly enjoyed my higher education journey in England and feel very lucky to be able to continue it through my doctoral training at UEL in collaboration with Procter & Gamble. 

My Research

My PhD project aims to advance our understanding of early socio-emotional development by examining parent-infant interactions and developing machine learning algorithms to help automate the analysis of wearable technology data.

Specifically, the project aims to 1) develop and validate multimodal methodological systems using wearables allowing for parent-child research in home-settings and synchronised analysis through machine learning, 2) examine how environmental factors (noise, chaos) might impact parental responsiveness during nappy changes, and 3) investigate parent-child synchrony, affect and emotional regulation to ascertain mechanisms behind stress contagion and reciprocity during nappy changes to feed into P&G Baby Care product development.

Impact of My Research

Firstly, the development of automated methods to analyse infant-caregiver interactions will allow for research to be replicated more frequently and less cost-intensively, allowing for bigger samples and consequently more representative data to more reliably shape early-year caregiving policy and practice.

Furthermore, the additional focus on environmental impacts on parent-infant interactions could highlight caregiving variables in need of policy-related attention and, therefore, can serve as evidence to allocate funding for targeted interventions.

Additionally, through the co-communication between child development academia and the baby care industry through the collaboration with Procter & Gamble, this project also has the potential to aid baby care product development, through a focus on creating nappy change experiences that promote positive and responsive parent-infant interactions.