Our team
Our team
Monash team
As a principal investigator, Marilyn is committed to mentoring women in research.
Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer
Principal Investigator
Marilyn is Monash's Foundation Chair in Early Childhood Education and Development, and an ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellow. Marilyn is an honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University of Oxford and holds a second Professor position in the KINDknow Centre, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.
Dr Glykeria Fragkiadaki
Senior Research Fellow
Glykeria comes to us from Department of Educational Sciences and Early Childhood Education University of Patras, Greece. With expertise in mixed methods and cultural-historical theory, she has undertaken a series of STEM studies in preschool settings.
Dr Prabhat Rai
Senior Research Fellow
Prabhat completed his PhD from Oxford and comes to us from Ambedkar University, Delhi. Previously he worked as a Senior Fellow (Research) in Bhutan and was an Assistant Professor with Academic Unit of the Central Board of Secondary Education in Delhi. He brings extensive experience in researching communities, early years settings and families.
Dr Rebecca Lewis
Post Doctoral Research Associate
Rebecca comes to the Conceptual PlayLab with a PhD in professional development from a cultural-historical perspective, together with over fifteen years of teaching and leadership experience in the early childhood education field. Using the Conceptual PlayWorld model her focus is supporting educators' role in play to create engaging opportunities for children's participation, learning and development.
Dr Sue March
Research Officer
Sue is an experienced research coordinator. She has worked on four of Professor Fleer’s ARC Discovery projects. She has a PhD in early childhood education. Sue is experienced working with the visual methodologies of Conceptual PlayWorlds and providing technological mentoring and support.
Dr Liang Li
Senior Lecturer, Early Childhood Education
Liang's research supports the Maths pillar of the Conceptual PlayLab. Liang takes a cultural-historical perspective to investigate infant-toddlers' education and care, family practices, children's play and pedagogy, children's speech development, science, technology and mathematics in early childhood and primary education settings in China and Australia.
Dr Leigh Disney
Lecturer, Early Years
Leigh's research supports the Maths pillar of the Conceptual PlayLab.Leigh. Leigh is a mixed methodological researcher who studies early years mathematical learning as well as the impact of digital technology within early years educational settings.
Six PhD students are affiliated with this research.
External advisers
We are proud two of the world’s leading early childhood researchers involved with the programmatic research of our Conceptual PlayLab.
Jo-Anne Baird
Director of the Department of Education, University of Oxford
Jo-Anne is an internationally recognised education researcher, with a focus on assessment. Her recent projects include the effect of examination structures, predictability of examinations, marking quality and the definition of examination standards. She is the executive editor of the international research journal Assessment in Education: Principles, policy and practice.
Colette Murphy
Director of STEM Education Research and Communication in the School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Colette has developed the concept of co-teaching in STEM as part of her research program examining how schools and industry collaborate to enrich the learning experience of primary school children.