Dr Laura Taylor is the Associate Head (Development) for the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences. Her responsibilities include marketing, admissions, course development and internationalisation. Since taking on this role in 2009 she has set up Erasmus arrangements so that students studying in the Department can go on a ‘study abroad’ year in places such as Turkey, Malta, Sweden, Spain and Cyprus and she has worked with colleagues to internationalise the student experience by giving students the chance to travel abroad and the opportunity to collaborate with students studying in other cultures. She has also expanded the Departmental course portfolio substantially and overseen the development of a number of new programmes.

She lectures in Developmental and Educational Psychology on both undergraduate and postgraduate courses and is particularly interested in the cognitive development of young children; especially their development of an understanding of mind and their empathetic abilities. She also has keen interest in atypical development, specifically autistic spectrum disorders, psychopathic personality traits and bullying behaviour. She has published a number of research papers which focus on these topics and also published a text book entitled Introducing Cognitive Development.